The loss of public values when public shareholders go abroad

Governments emerged as “international public shareholders” when publicly-owned utilities developed into some of the world's largest multinationals. This article enquires whether these international public shareholders maintain their public values when operating abroad. Taking a public values approach, we assess whether public values were transferred across borders focusing on five core dimensions: financial, economic, social, technical and environmental. We analyze the internationalization activities of two large public utilities, Vattenfall and Endesa - strategically selected for representing strong and weak public values - in their major markets in Europe and Latin America. We find that, irrespective of the relative strength of the initial public values legacy of the public utility, the lure of financial success trumped other competing objectives associated with the public shareholder abroad.