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This study offers a map based on a corpus made up of the annual reports of the 100 largest stock market capitalizations in the world, analyzed using artificial intelligence tools applied to sections with strong strategic impact – Risk Factors, Management Discussion & Analysis and letters to shareholders. The ambition is not to measure the geopolitical risk to which these companies are exposed, but toanalyze the way in which they formulate it, prioritize it and integrate it into their governance.
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A double geography of risk
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A double geography of risk
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The first lesson from this analysis is that geopolitical risk is neither an exogenous variable nor a uniform reality. Its formulation follows a double geography: that of the head office, which anchors each company in a specific national, ideological and regulatory framework; and that of operations, which determines the concrete nature of its vulnerabilities. Understanding what a company fears means first understanding where and how it views the world.
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This double geography reveals four groups:
- THE American companieswhich alone represent 73% of the total capitalization of the Top 100 in 2025understand geopolitical risk above all as a threat to their hégémonie et à la sécurité nationale.
- THE European companies adopt a normative reading, centered on the erosion of the rule of law, the decline of multilateralism and the weakening of regulatory predictability. Caught between Washington and Beijing, they formulate their main vulnerability around the transatlantic relationship, described as both central and as a source of growing uncertainties.
- THE Chinese companiesfor their part, explicitly align their discourse with the Party’s priorities: ideological conformity is an integral pillar of their risk management.
- THE companies Indianfinally, constitute the most singular case: they read the recomposition of the world order as a structural opportunity, a posture made possible by an assumed diplomatic multi-alignment.
- Aramco, and Saudi Arabiais an actor apart.
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A sectoral nature of risk
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A sectoral nature of risk
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The second lesson concerns the variety of forms that geopolitical risk takes depending on the sectors of activity.
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In the sector énergétiquethe risk mainly concerns traffic infrastructure: sabotage of pipelines, disruptions in the Red Sea, blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, expropriations and surcharges windfall. Geopolitics directly impacts assets, operational costs and price volatility.
In the sector financierthe risk is linked to lawfare : the extraterritoriality of American sanctions constitutes the main threat, while international payment systems have become an area of confrontation between powers.
In the pharmaceutical sectorthe risk concerns the dependence on Asian active ingredients, which requires reviewing their supply chains.
In the sector technologicalthe risk is that of fragmentation: the question is no longer whether the global digital ecosystem will divide into distinct blocks, but at what speed.
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A revealing temporal asymmetry
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A revealing temporal asymmetry
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Transversal teaching runs through the entire corpus: geopolitical risk absorbs the present, when the climate threat marks the horizon. Climate risk is recognized by almost all of the companies analyzed, but it is mainly referred to medium and long term scenarios: 2030, 2050, or even 2100. This temporal differentiation is itself a risk: it exposes organizations to brutal adjustments when climate effects impose themselves at a pace not anticipated by the models.
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Artificial intelligence as a third dimension
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Artificial intelligence as a third dimension
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To the double geography which structures the perception of risk could soon be added a third dimension: the place occupied by each company in the new hierarchy ofartificial intelligence. AI is now integrated into annual reports no longer as a tool, but as a strategic infrastructure in its own right. This recomposition will not be neutral: it will embrace, while amplifying them, the fractures already at work between powers, between sectors and between models of governance.
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Fragmentation as a market
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Fragmentation as a market
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Final lesson: reading annual reports would be incomplete if it was limited to threats. Several companies have made a reversal of perspective which deserves to be highlighted: geopolitical fragmentation is no longer just a risk to be covered, it opens markets.
GO FURTHER:
Read the Ifri study, by Thomas GOMART and Siméo PONT: “ The factory of risk: companies facing geopolitical doxa » (avril 2025).
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