In fact, all the top five SINTNCs are GLCs leading in OFDI in such strategic sectors as air transport, shipping, telecommunications, shipyard and shipbuilding, and property development.

The ill fated F125 frigate made headlines last year, when the German Navy officially refused to commission the vessel and returned it to Blohm Voss shipyard in Hamburg.

The gaunt, gentlemanly Mazowiecki had served as an adviser to Lech Wałęsa, the leader of the Solidarity movement. He had seen the movement swell to more than nine million members in the heady days after the August 1980 Gdansk Shipyard strike and, like the rest of the movement s leadership, had been interned when General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and banned Solidarity 16 months later.