First, some statistics. The profit of the world's largest corporation Wal-Mart Stores Inc. exceeds the GDP of any country in the world, with the exception of 25. And the number of employees working in it (2.1 million people) is greater than the population of each of almost 100 countries. Modest New York investment company Low-profile asset BlackRock has $3.5 trillion in assets under management, more than the national reserves of any nation on the planet. For 2010 only Gates Foundation, private Charitable organization, which has a fund of $33.5 billion, has allocated more money to various projects around the world than was in the annual budget of the World Health Organization.

The statistics are amazing, and these are no jokes. Over the past hundred years, the world's largest private corporations have eclipsed almost all governments in terms of their resources, global reach and influence, except for the governments of the largest countries. At the same time, even rich countries are busy fighting overgrown bureaucracies, budget crises, and declining confidence in governments. And in an era when the issues that affect people's lives are becoming increasingly international, governments around the world are losing credibility because their own borders limit their actions.

That is why achieving an acceptable balance between the power of business and the power of the state is the main task of our time. Find the sweet spot—that is, smart and smart regulation that empowers citizens to compete, promotes economic dynamism, and ensures fairness for all—and your society will thrive in the 21st century. The slightest shift in the balance, and you will get social instability, a decrease in well-being and opportunities to be the master of your own destiny. Two "poles", the choice between which is, it would seem, exclusively internal in nature, will have huge geopolitical consequences.

This is currently the main political issue in the United States. Is the government too big, has it not become a burden on society and a threat to the freedom of the individual? Perhaps it is too ineffective protector ordinary people being shaped by big business and monetary interests? Does government contribute to the general welfare, or does it institutionalize inequality and serve the minority - just 1% of the population - rather than the majority?

Such controversies stir Europe too, but this process is complicated by fierce disputes about the amount of power that individual countries will have to transfer to the collective European Union, as well as whose interests such joint management will serve. After all, such management is a departure from traditional ideas the nation state and the role it plays. Ask this question to a German and a Greek and you will get completely different answers.

In China, the tug-of-war "state - private business” can be traced at all social levels of a society that is transforming itself at such a rapid pace that stability and economic growth often seem to be incompatible and at the same time so necessary to each other. This is the problem that the entire developing world is facing. The spectrum of its manifestations ranges from fierce battles between Russia's oligarchs and its political leaders to unceasing social uprisings and protests in the Arab world, where last year's uprisings were directed both against nepotism and those governments that served the economic interests of the elites, and for personal freedoms and equal opportunity

We must come to the right balance of power. A decade and a half ago, the United States celebrated the triumph of American capitalism and the surrender of state power before the elements of the market. It was the dance of the victors on the ruins of communism and socialism. But now it is already obvious that it was too early to celebrate the victory.

Since then, we have come a long way from a simple confrontation between capitalism and communism to something much more complex, namely, the struggle between various forms of capitalism, which differ in the ratio of the roles and responsibilities of government officials and private business. Since the free market model promoted by Washington has not yet recovered from its self-inflicted wound, other models and approaches are gaining momentum. Emerging models of capitalism are vying with each other for spheres of influence, from “capitalism with a Chinese face” to “democratic development capitalism” of India and Brazil, from economies in northern Europe with strong fiscal discipline and an equally strong social contract between state and business to small countries with “entrepreneurial capitalism” like Israel, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

BlackRock has $3.5 trillion in assets, more than China's foreign exchange reserves.

With regard to the United States, as well as other countries that have adopted American model, one gets the feeling that the heavy hand of economically powerful corporations lies in the balance that determines the legal, legislative and regulatory framework. This situation is causing a flood of complaints that the balance of power has shifted too far in favor of private business. Economic inequality has increased both in terms of economic outcomes and in terms of the sheer privileges enjoyed by a very powerful elite, both within and outside the law. Nothing illustrates the flaws American system better than the recent financial crisis, during which several major financial structures ignored the rules and regulations, abused their freedoms, and convinced the government to save them (not their victims), and then managed to block real reforms and bring back almost all the business practices that got them into trouble in the first place. This has generated a backlash that can be seen in everything from the Occupy Wall Street movement to nationalist protests against globalization.

International Paper owns 77,000 sq. km of land is more than the territory of Panama (74,000 sq. km)

The world needs a new matrix that would reflect the new reality. Most countries have lost so many of their sovereign rights (or they have been curtailed) that their real power is nothing like what it used to be. Take, for example, the basic powers of state power, such as control over state border, printing money, enforcing laws or using force outside the country. All this has changed irreversibly. Thanks to the Internet, modern transport system and universal globalization, states are no longer able to control or manage most of what crosses their borders. Few countries have a currency that is traded internationally, while the amount of private financial instruments issued, such as derivatives, far outstrips the amount of cash printed by governments around the world. Global corporations now have the ability to "pick and buy" a seat, and when it comes to tax compliance, simply change seats if the government enacts laws they don't like. And fewer than 20 countries have a real ability to use military force outside their borders for any long period of time.

Goldman Sach's assets were $937 billion in 2011. For comparison, the reserves of the European Central Bank amounted to 667 billion euros (878 billion dollars)

Meanwhile, a large corporation like ExxonMobil with sales of $350 billion in 2011 operates in twice the number of countries in which a well-known and wealthy country like Sweden has embassies. In 2010, Sweden's defense spending accounted for one-sixth of Exxon's budgetary spending. The energy giant has much more free funds to invest around the world and plays much big role in the economic life of many countries, and also mobilizes more resources to influence political outcomes than the Swedes can afford. Ask yourself who has more influence on the outcome of global climate change negotiations, the Swedes or Exxon? What about the implementation of environmental policy around the world?

Matching the size of companies with the size of countries is a trick using imperfect methods of calculation, but judge for yourself: the 1000th position in the list of the world's largest corporations is occupied by a company whose annual sales exceed the GDP of 57 countries. This company, Owens-Illinois, produces glass containers and its revenue exceeded 7 billion in 2010, overtaking the GDP of such countries as Benin, Bermuda, Haiti, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Tajikistan and a dozen other countries. According to Fortune magazine, of the 500 largest corporations in the world, all 500 would be among the 100 largest economies on the planet. And although GDP is a complex characteristic calculated taking into account the added value and it cannot be directly compared with the company's sales volume, however, such a comparison gives an idea of ​​the scale.

The phenomenon of corporate power is, of course, nothing new. The British East India Company controlled the Indian subcontinent and one of the largest military forces in the world. Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford built entire cities for thousands of their workers, providing housing and schools for their employees. However, over the past century, the managerial role of companies, and so comparable to the state, has grown and changed even more, becoming more extensive, and the transnational corporations themselves have grown even more. And today, corporations are often pursuing something very similar to their own foreign policy. They launch active political propaganda campaigns, such as ExxonMobil's lobbying for a decision to stop the US from accepting the Kyoto Protocol. They perform serious security tasks, such as the campaign formerly known as Blackwater during the Iraq War. They also provide health care, training, housing, and other functions that the state should perform but cannot or does not want to do.

And as a result, societies are emerging that are constantly in a “malfunctioning state” and with too much power concentrated in the hands of large, often located outside the country, corporations that, by and large, are accountable only to their shareholders. And at the same time, society is aware that the increasingly weak institutions designed to ensure their right to vote are unable to fulfill even the most significant conditions. social contract, since issues that require effective solutions are outside their jurisdiction.

This article does not call for a revolution. If bloodshed, social experimentation and ideological polarization throughout the 20th century have taught us a lesson, it is that extreme measures do not work when we are trying to create a balance between the power of the state and the power of business. No society can prosper without establishing a balance between them. It will be painful for some American citizens to realize that we have lost some of our ability to influence the restoration of this balance. But for the disenfranchised majority who make up 99% of the population today, a capitalist hybrid that is likely to be born out of competition in the global marketplace of ideas may well be a fairer and more sustainable alternative.

David Rothkopf - CEO And Chief Editor Foreign Policy magazine

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/

Nefedkin V.I.
Candidate of Economics, Senior Researcher
Center for Resource Economics of the Institute of Economics
and organizations industrial production SB RAS
(IEEP SB RAS, Novosibirsk)

A feature of the Russian economy, inherited from Soviet times, remains a high concentration of management. If in the USSR almost all significant enterprises were part of a rigid management vertical (enterprise - production association - ministry), now a significant part of the production assets are integrated into large structures, which are characterized by an extensive spatial organization and dominance in certain areas of activity and regions. There are clear signs that the influence of such structures in the Russian economy is growing, and vertical (hierarchical) coordination is increasingly replacing horizontal coordination based on the interaction of equal market entities. The nationalization of assets important from the point of view of power, combined with the growth of the largest corporations through the merger and absorption of regional companies, significantly changes the structure of both individual industries and the economy as a whole, and also affects the development of regions.

The reasons for this go far beyond the scope of economic relations proper. The hierarchy of economic power in modern Russia became an integral part of a more complex structure, which is commonly called the "vertical of power". According to the authors who develop theoretical concept“power-property”, in the modern Russian hierarchy, in parallel with the main pyramid of power, a hierarchy of big business has developed. Within this design economic activity controlled by the “vertical” primarily through the dominance of state corporations in the economy, as well as leading monopolies, formally private, but in their policies really dependent on those who are at the center of this structure (Pliskevich, 2015).

Large business structures in Russia: evil or good?

In the 1990s, domestic authors conducted a number of studies that studied the stages of formation and features organizational forms large business in Russia, and also evaluated the effectiveness of various forms of integration of production assets. In particular, it was noted that enterprises belonging to financial and industrial groups (FIGs) showed better results than the industry as a whole (Dementiev, 2000).

Center macro economic analysis and forecasting from 2004 to 2010 regularly published reviews highlighting the most notable events and trends in corporate mergers and acquisitions. An analytical summary of these peculiar "corporate chronicles", including a detailed classification of integrated business groups, is presented in a monograph published in 2009 (Pappe, Galukhina, 2009). Its authors noted that, despite the observed increase in the state presence in the economy over the past five years, no transition to a new state-capitalist model is visible. The events of the next six years, in our opinion, no longer give grounds for such a conclusion.

After the crisis of 2008-2009 cautiously positive assessments of the role of big business in the Russian economy are gradually being replaced by critically negative ones. The reason for criticism was most often individual stories related to the manifestation of the monopoly position of state-owned corporations, dubious schemes for transferring assets previously owned by the state to the control of private individuals, and precedents for large-scale state support for large companies, including those controlled by private capital.

The models of functioning of private business groups also became the object of criticism. It was noted that the predominant form of large Russian business became conglomerates registered offshore, owned by one person or a narrow group of persons and operating, in fact, as investment funds engaged in buying up undervalued assets with a view to their subsequent resale. At the same time, during periods of crisis, they receive state support, which is directed not to the modernization of production and innovation, but to the repayment of corporate debts and the acquisition of cheaper assets and real estate, including abroad (Blyakhman, Zyabrikov, 2015).

An attempt at a deeper analysis of changes in the sphere of big business and an assessment of their impact on the organization and performance of the Russian economy inevitably leads to the formulation of interrelated research questions:

• What changes in the Russian economy have been initiated by the development of big business?
• Is it possible to explain the mechanism of these changes based on well-known theoretical concepts?
• Is it possible to quantify the influence (power) of big business?
• Are there sustainable long-term trends that characterize the degree of influence of big business on the Russian economy?
• What are the already observed and possible future consequences of these trends for the economy as a whole and for individual regions?

From market power to economic power

In research monopolistic competition market power is associated with the ability to extract additional profit from violating the conditions perfect competition influence on the market. IN modern theory organization of markets, the firm from the subject of the market turns into the subject of the industry. Behind this is an important and quite realistic provision: the subjects of competition are not the goods of different manufacturers, but directly the producers of these goods. At the same time, the premise that simplifies theoretical analysis that a manufacturer is assigned to a certain industry does not fit well with the realities. modern economy, in which there are large diversified corporations that are able to compete with each other, including through the acquisition of assets in different industries.

At first glance, the desire of large businesses to acquire non-core assets has a positive effect on the market, increasing the level of competition in industries and areas of activity with a high concentration. However, in practice, in the implementation of such transactions, it is not so much considerations of developing the core business due to, for example, completing the construction of vertical integration schemes, as the desire for "inorganic" growth and speculative motivation. There are many examples when core assets were acquired solely for the purpose of extensive business growth and the elimination of direct competitors, while non-core assets were acquired for the purpose of resale during a favorable economic situation. Such acquisitions "sin" not only private corporations, but also corporations with state participation.

In the economy of "corporate conglomerates", the goal of competition is not to obtain maximum market power in individual industries, but to maximize the total power in all industries and areas of activity in which there are assets controlled by the corporation. This power will be called "economic" in the sense that it allows you to extract additional benefits from the whole range of opportunities that big business has, but which other economic agents do not have.

The term "economic power" has long been used in the writings of economists and sociologists. W. Eucken, in a work published back in 1940, noted that “the first task of the national economy is the discovery of concrete facts that substantiate economic power, and the study of the real influence of economic power” (Eucken, 1996, p. 337). F. Perroux described the "dominance effect" associated with the presence of power relations in the economy (Perroux, 1950). In the works of K. Rothschild (Rothschild, 1971), W. Samuels (Samuels, 1979) and a number of other researchers, economic power is presented as the most important factor, consistently ignored in mainstream economics (see also Young, 1995).

The term "economic power" is ambiguous and has not yet entered the mainstream. At the same time, our interpretation allows us to expand the possibilities of studying the impact of big business on the economy beyond the traditional analysis of industry markets, and “corporate power” can be considered as one of the manifestations of economic power.

If the market power potential of a mono-industry firm can be estimated as its share in the industry output, then the economic power potential of a diversified corporation can be estimated by measuring the degree of its presence in all industries and regions. By acquiring new assets, the corporation increases its economic power and is able to extract additional benefits.

From the point of view of the new institutional theory, the inclusion of power relations in the subject of economic analysis means expanding the rational choice model by introducing into it the assumption of inequality (asymmetry) of transaction agents (Williamson, 1981). In our case, such agents will be large corporations, which, due to their size, market position, proximity to government structures, and other circumstances, have opportunities that other business entities do not have.

Asymmetry manifests itself both in relation to transactions carried out with independent agents, and in internal (intra-group) transactions with agents included in corporate control schemes - subsidiaries and affiliates, structural divisions. The larger the total volume of transactions carried out with the participation of a corporation, the more potential benefits can be derived by the owners and top managers of corporations from the asymmetry described above.

There are two fundamentally different ways to increase the volume of transactions for each individual corporation. The first is through the creation of new and development of existing business lines (companies), that is, organic growth. The second is due to the takeover and absorption of other companies, that is, inorganic growth, which, unlike the first, does not increase, but redistributes the added value created in the economy.

If a corporation acquires control over an independent company or a company previously controlled by another corporation, then this increases its economic power. A similar result is obtained by the organic growth of a corporation, provided that it grows faster than its competitors. This means that the consequences of unidirectional changes in the concentration of economic power can be diametrically opposed even in the same country in different periods. Yes, bet on state support development of large diversified businesses in South Korea and Japan has made it possible to achieve impressive economic results. At the same time, after a long period economic growth such a development model began to falter and forced, in particular, the South Korean government to seriously reformat relations with big business, introduce additional restrictions and reduce preferences for the activities of chaebols.

Assessing the Concentration of Corporate Power

Methodical explanations

Strictly speaking, it is impossible to "measure" power directly. It is more correct to speak about measuring the potential of power. Power is associated with relations of domination and subordination, which can be represented as a hierarchical "tree", where lower subjects are subordinate to higher ones. This representation of power already allows quantitative estimates 1 . The power potential of a corporation is determined by the economic and administrative resources that it controls, and can be based not only on the monopoly position, but also on the value of assets, market capitalization, the number of employees, the volume of controlled monetary resources, the functional, technological or legal dependence of other economic resources on it. agents.

As a metric, you can use the total volume of transactions in which the corporation participates. Since only recorded transactions are directly measurable, the most appropriate measure would be sales revenue as reflected in the financial statements. legal entities. This indicator, unlike assets or profit, does not have industry specifics. If, for objective reasons, individual industries can be more capital-intensive or, say, less profitable than others, then in terms of sales revenue, all industries and companies are equal 2 .

In the context of the intra-group hierarchy, we will distinguish between companies (legal entities) and groups of companies. Assume that for any company, you can accurately identify the company that controls it, the highest in the hierarchy. The criterion of control (full power) in this case will be the possession of the majority of voting shares (ownership). If a company is not wholly controlled by another company, then it can be considered independent. A group of companies connected by this kind of hierarchical relationship of control/subordination will be referred to as a corporation. Each company can be localized, that is, correlated with a certain region, depending on the place of its registration with the tax authorities or its actual location. Thus, by "tying" each company to a certain corporation and region, it is possible to evaluate the corporate and territorial structure of transactions.

The mechanism of concentration of corporate power can be illustrated by the following conditional example. Imagine that there are five independent companies in the economy that purchase goods and services in equal (single) volumes according to the “each from each” scheme, that is, they carry out free (voluntary) transactions among themselves. For simplicity, we assume that the intensity of transactions is constant over time. The total number of market transactions (Q) in this case will obviously be equal to Q = N 2 - N, where N is the number of companies. With N = 5, Q will be equal to 20. After two companies merge into a group (corporation), transactions between them will become controlled (limitedly voluntary), and Q will decrease to 18. The addition of another company will reduce the number of market transactions to 14, etc.

If we calculate the value of the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) 3 for all three cases, then it will be 2000, 2800 and 4200, respectively. The combination of all companies into one corporation (Q = 0) will correspond to the maximum possible value of HHI = 10000. Thus, an increase in HHI, with other equal conditions, will mean an increase in the concentration of corporate power and the share of intra-group (limitedly voluntary) transactions.

For practical application In this approach, it is important what information is used to evaluate transactions. The financial statements of companies (legal entities) record data characterizing the number of transactions - sales (for a given company) and purchases (for supplier companies). If, for example, revenue is consolidated according to the rules international standards financial statements (IFRS) with the exclusion of intra-group (inter-segment) flows, the calculation will inevitably be distorted towards underestimation. The reduction will be the greater, the higher the degree of vertical integration in the group of companies. The highest accuracy is provided by primary non-consolidated data containing the most complete information on the volume of transactions 4 . These data are contained in the financial statements of legal entities under Russian standards accounting(RAS). The use of such data makes it possible to apply a single methodology for calculating consolidated revenue for all corporations and, therefore, ensures comparability in dynamic analysis.

Calculation based on corporate ratings data

Data on sales volumes of large corporations can be found in different sources. For example, RA "Expert" since 1994 has been rating the largest domestic companies. Based on those given in the ratings for 1994-2014. top 200 revenue data Russian companies(in our terminology - "corporations"), we calculated the HHI values, which in this case can be interpreted both as a characteristic of the degree of hierarchical (corporate) control in the economy, and as a generalized indicator of the concentration of economic power potential. The dynamics of HHI makes it possible to single out two fundamentally different periods in terms of the main trend (Fig. 1).

In the first period (1994-2004) a rapid decrease in concentration was observed. For ten years, the value of the index has decreased by almost 3 times. This is not surprising, since it was a period of mass privatization and subsequent disaggregation of the "giants of Soviet industry." Revenue of large industrial enterprises during this period, either decreased in nominal terms, or grew more slowly than the total revenue of other companies. During the second period (2004-2013), the HHI value stabilized - it reached a maximum in 2008, and in 2009-2013. returned to the indicators of 2005-2007. The long-term downward trend in concentration has given way to stabilization.

How high is concentration in the Russian economy? The value of HHI in the last four years was 330-360 points. For comparison: the same indicator for the 200 largest US companies over the same period was in the range of 115-118 points 5 . Thus, Russian indicators concentrations, for all the conventions of this comparison, are more than 3 times higher than American ones.

The conclusions drawn from the analysis of the data of the annual ratings should be treated critically. The main problem is that when compiling corporate ratings, the data of consolidated reporting under IFRS are taken as the basis, and in their absence, data from management or financial statements prepared according to Russian standards (RAS). Mixing in one rating of indicators obtained by three different methods inevitably distorts the concentration calculation.

It should also be taken into account that the reporting of Russian companies under IFRS includes consolidated data on their foreign assets. If we measure the potential of economic power in Russia, then the proceeds of foreign assets will distort the calculations. In addition, during the analyzed period, the methodology for compiling the rating of RA Expert changed: if initially only industrial companies were included in the rating, then starting from 2003, the circle of participants was expanded to include other sectors of the real sector, commercial banks and insurance companies.

Alternative calculation

In order to ensure comparability of indicators of different corporations, we carried out an alternative calculation using primary financial statements (RAS) and information on corporate control of the 500 largest Russian companies by revenue (Top-500) 6 in the non-financial sector. Accordingly, existing banking groups were not considered as separate corporations. The consolidated revenue of each corporation was defined as the sum of the revenues of all the companies it controls.

The company's indicators were included in the corporation's indicators only if there was full control (more than 50% of voting shares or authorized capital). Companies not covered by corporate control schemes, including joint ventures with parity of owners, were treated as separate corporations. According to the indicators of consolidated revenue for each year, the 200 largest corporations 7 were identified and HHI values ​​were calculated showing the concentration of revenue (see Fig. 1).

Comparison of the results of calculations by corporate ratings (see Fig. 1) and by an alternative method (Fig. 2) reveals significant differences. If in 2004 the HHI discrepancy was 173 points, then in 2013 it was already 390 points. The discrepancy is explained both by the different composition of companies and by the IFRS revenue “reduction” factor, which relatively underestimates the number of internal transactions in large corporations 8 . In addition, the dynamics of the concentration index has fundamentally changed. The point of the minimum concentration in both calculations coincides (2004), but then the dynamics of HHI is very different: if in the first calculation its value practically stabilizes after 2004, then in the alternative there is a pronounced upward trend.

Fluctuations in concentration in some years are associated with major corporate events: the forced bankruptcy of Yukos Oil Company, the acquisition of Sibneft assets by Gazprom, the reform of RAO UES, the takeover of TNK-BP by Rosneft. Not all of these events resulted in an increase in the concentration index. Nevertheless, the presence of a long-term upward trend is obvious. For ten years, the concentration index has increased from 491 (2004) to 746 (2013), or 1.5 times.

An analysis of changes in corporate concentration indicators shows that the largest corporations have become their main drivers.

Table 1 shows that the concentration of corporate power in the real sector increases over time. Over ten years (2004-2013), the share of the largest (Top-5) corporations in the revenue of the Top-500 companies increased by 8.2 p.p. The share of the largest state-controlled corporations in the total revenue of the Top-5 for the same period increased from 69.5 to 85%.

Table 1

Distribution of Top 500 revenue among the five largest corporations in 2004-2014 (V %)

Changes in the spatial distribution of economic power

The growth in the concentration of economic power has quite definite consequences both for the economy as a whole and for individual regions in whose territory subdivisions (regional assets) of large corporations operate. Vertical integration assets leads to a distortion of the statistics of the gross regional product 9 , and the use of various corporate schemes directly affects the revenues of regional budgets, the inflow and outflow of financial resources, the production and distribution of value added, and ultimately the standard of living of the population of the regions.

As noted above, the revenues of companies can be distributed (localized) depending on the place of their tax registration. Changes in the territorial concentration of sales revenue over the past 11 years are obvious. Table 2 shows that the share of companies registered in the Central and Northwestern federal districts increased the most — by 9.4 and 3.7 percentage points, respectively. At the same time, 90% of the growth in the share of the Central Federal District was provided by Moscow. And the increase in the share of St. Petersburg took place against the background of a decrease in the share of the rest of the North-Western District. The increase in the share of the Southern District after 2010 seems to be related to the growth in business activity initiated by the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

table 2

Distribution of Top-500 revenue between federal districts in 2004-2014 (V %)

* Within modern administrative boundaries.

Sources: author's calculations.

The greatest “losses” in the period under review were suffered by the federal districts, where hydrocarbon raw materials are extracted, the export of which forms the basis of the economic potential of modern Russia. The pattern is obvious: the more oil and gas production, the greater the decline. The largest decline was in the Urals (6.7 p.p.) and Volga (3.3 p.p.) federal districts, which accounted for 79% of all oil production in 2014 10 . The share of the Siberian Federal District, which provides last years the entire increase in oil production.

The share of revenues of companies registered in Moscow and St. Petersburg is growing, while the share of companies from the periphery and especially the eastern regions, which traditionally have a stable raw materials specialization, is decreasing. The assumption that growth specific gravity of economic capitals in the revenue of the largest companies in Russia is explained by a higher growth in business activity in comparison with other regions, which is easily refuted by statistics. From 2004 to 2013, the share of Moscow in the total GRP of all constituent entities of the Russian Federation increased by only 1 p.p., while that of St. Petersburg increased by 0.8 p.p. corporations increase their power mainly through the acquisition and absorption of existing companies.

The consequences of the largest transaction in the Russian history on the market of corporate mergers and acquisitions are indicative. The revenue of the TNK-BP corporation registered in the Tyumen region (now PH-Holding) after the acquisition by Rosneft decreased from 1279 billion rubles. in 2012 to 688 billion in 2013 and up to 10 billion rubles. in 2014. As noted in the notes to the financial statements of PH-Holding, the decrease in revenue was mainly due to a decrease in sales volume due to the transfer of trade flows to other enterprises of the Rosneft Oil Company Group 12 .

Corporate rent

A common consequence of economic power is the discrepancy between private and social costs known from economic theory. In contrast to models based on the assumptions of equal and voluntary exchange, in our context, the discrepancy between private and social costs and benefits is not an externality (an unintended by-product of a transaction), but a conscious result of utility maximization under conditions of inequality of agents (Dementiev, 2004). It can be assumed that an increase in the concentration of economic power will mean that an increasing part of transactions will be carried out in unequal conditions for participants. Moreover, this applies to both internal and external transactions for the corporation. If, say, a small supplier of a large trading network is forced to supply his products at reduced prices, it does not matter whether he is inside a corporation or, due to his low economic power, is forced to submit to the conditions of an agent who obviously has greater economic power. The consequences for the dependent supplier and the trading network will in any case be diametrically opposed.

The growth of the potential of the economic power of a certain corporation expands the possibilities for obtaining additional benefits for it, which are not limited to traditional monopoly rent and are not limited to non-equivalent, but formally market transactions. They should be supplemented by the benefits of increased loyalty of the government to large corporations. Of course, the opportunities for obtaining these benefits are not limited solely to the scale of business of potential beneficiaries. However, large corporations are more likely to receive various kinds of preferences. An example is the anti-crisis program of the Government of the Russian Federation for 2008-2009, in accordance with which the bulk of financial assistance was received by "backbone", that is, large corporations.

Getting a variety of preferences gives additional features to increase sales and improve financial performance. Since some corporations get benefits because others do not, this means that such benefits are rentable in nature. Therefore, for a generalized characterization of these benefits, we introduce the concept of "corporate rent". Such a rent may exist in different forms. A large corporation, by virtue of its special (not necessarily monopoly) position, can receive:

• economically beneficial regulated tariffs (for natural monopolies) and favorable prices for government orders;
• direct government subsidies to support the current economic activity or for the implementation of investment projects;
• access to external financing on non-market terms, including loans on favorable terms from banks with state participation;
• privileges on taxes and other payments to the budget.

Situations are possible when the state, due to the expected negative effects and social resonance, is forced to assume the obligations of large corporations - potential bankrupts. In this case, there is a kind of "nationalization" of the obligations of large corporations.

Possible effects for the economy and individual regions

Market power allows a company to extract additional profits associated with market dominance. In this case, the increase in “producer surplus” is not symmetrical to the decrease in “consumer surplus”, which leads to the emergence of the so-called “sunk losses for society” (Tirol, 1996). The strengthening of the economic (corporate) power of one company can lead to an asymmetric deterioration in the position of other companies and end consumers. In other words, the cumulative effect on society, as in the case of market power, can be negative. Potentially negative effects can manifest themselves in different ways:

• the transformation of additional profit (rent) into costs;
• negative economies of scale;
• decrease in efficiency due to replacement market competition internal corporate control (with vertical integration).

It should be emphasized that the effect of the noted effects is not predetermined, that is, they do not always accompany an increase in concentration. Moreover, symmetrical effects are possible that can act in the opposite direction. Thus, obtaining corporate rent in the form of additional profit, if used to modernize and expand a business, can provide a positive effect for the economy. At the same time, the practice of large corporations 13 shows that additional profit is subsequently transformed into an increase in costs.

An increase in concentration can be accompanied by relative cost savings (positive economies of scale), and the replacement of the market by internal coordination can help reduce transaction costs. However, the predominance of non-organic growth can significantly limit the possible positive effects and at the same time provoke the development of negative phenomena that accompany the increase in business scale.

Consequences for the regions where production activity large corporations will depend on the level of control (power) of the corporation in relation to the consolidated regional companies. A regional asset acquired by a large corporation, as a rule, consistently undergoes organizational metamorphoses, accompanied by a decrease in its contribution to the economy and budget of the region. At the same time, the main manufacturing process may not change. The enterprise can continue to produce the same products in the same physical volumes. However, changing corporate control mechanisms will have dramatic and, as a rule, adverse consequences for local budgets and, ultimately, for the economic and social development region. These effects, exacerbated by unidirectional changes in tax legislation, become one of the growth factors for the imbalance in the budgets of individual constituent entities of the Russian Federation (Nefedkin, 2015).

A company that has fallen into the orbit of corporate power, as a rule, is included in the scheme of industrial and financial integration. There is a “reorganization” of the controlled company, as a result of which it can be divided into several companies, lose the status of a legal entity, turn into a branch or representative office of the parent company, deprived of any independence and managed from the corporate center. Such a “consolidation” of regional assets is primarily characteristic of vertically integrated corporations, in which transfer prices and other business organization schemes (processing, tolling, etc.) are widely practiced, reducing revenue operating companies and tax base of the region. The concentration of corporate power in many cases leads to a decrease in local content 14 produced by the regional assets of large corporations, and to a reduction in the regional component in the value added produced.

Our study first of all confirmed the possibility of using the proposed approach to explain the mechanism of the influence of big business on the economy. At the same time, a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the observed trends allows us to propose a number of meaningful conclusions and hypotheses that can be tested in subsequent studies. They can be formulated as answers to the questions posed in the introduction.

In the last decade, there have been noticeable changes in the Russian economy due to the growing influence of big business and, first of all, corporations directly or indirectly connected with the state. These changes can be interpreted as a steady move towards state-corporate capitalism, the immediate and long-term consequences of which have yet to be assessed.

The ongoing changes cannot be fully explained within the framework of traditional approaches related to the study of monopolistic competition and industry markets. The description of these changes and the assessment of the degree of their impact on the economy can be based on the concept of economic power, which implies the expansion of the prerequisites of the “new institutional theory” through the hypothesis of limited voluntariness of transactions under the dominance of some economic agents over others.

The degree of influence of large business can be quantified using the proposed method, which is based on assessing the structure and concentration of indicators characterizing the volume of transactions and the degree of corporate control over them. The results of calculations using different data arrays suggest that there is a long-term trend towards an increase in the concentration of economic power in 2005-2013. In conditions where external shocks are the main factor in the country's economic growth rates, it is extremely difficult to single out the specific impact of an increase in the concentration of corporate power on the development of the economy as a whole. Apparently, this is the subject of a special study that is beyond the scope of this publication. However, there is reason to believe that the inorganic growth model, which is typical primarily for the largest Russian corporations with state participation, does not contribute to the increase in value added for the economy as a whole and negatively affects economic growth rates.

A further increase in the concentration of economic power and the accompanying increase in corporate rent, in our opinion, will negatively affect the opportunities for economic growth in the medium and long term. Countering this trend with traditional tools of antitrust regulation has little chance of success. The reorientation of Russian large business towards an organic growth model seems to be an extremely difficult task, but without solving it, one can seriously count on sustainable growth the economy as a whole and the solution of the accumulated problems of the development of resource regions, in our opinion, is not necessary. The use of well-known practices of interaction between transnational corporations and developing countries, involving the implementation of local content development programs that contribute to an increase in the added value remaining in the country (region) in the territory of which (which) large-scale development projects are carried out natural resources, could, in our opinion, contribute to the elimination of the growing asymmetry in economic relations between economic centers and regions - the main suppliers of export raw materials and radically change approaches to the development of the resource potential of the eastern regions of Russia.

1 For example, in the corporate hierarchy, the power potential of a certain manager is determined by the number and rank of employees and departments subordinate to him, the size of the budget that he manages.

2 This principle does not, strictly speaking, apply to companies in the financial sector. The revenue (turnover) of financial intermediaries, determined by the amount of transactions, can reach astronomical values. It is not entirely correct to compare it with the revenue of real sector companies.

3 The Herfindahl-Hirschman index is calculated as the sum of the squared shares of companies, measured as a percentage, in the total value of the indicator. For five companies of equal size transactions, it will be equal to 5x20x20 = 2000.

4 It should be borne in mind that as a result of the merger of two companies, transactions between them will no longer be reflected in the financial statements of the combined company, which may also affect the results of calculations.

6 The data for the top 500 companies provide a good approximation of the entire real sector, as it includes most of the assets that are attractive for corporate control. In 2005-2014, according to our estimates, these companies accounted for 50-56% of non-financial sector revenue.

7 According to our calculations, the 200 largest corporations in 2002-2014 controlled 95-97 0/o of the top 500 companies in the non-financial sector. For the initial data for calculations and the final ratings of the top 200, see: https: yadi.sk d Lndd01RNkvh5D.

8 In 2013, Gazprom Group's revenue under IFRS amounted to 5,145 billion rubles, the total revenue of companies controlled by Gazprom and included in the Top 500 amounted to 10,205 billion rubles, that is, the group's revenue compared to corporations that did not switch to IFRS, doubled down.

9 The methodological explanations of Rosstat to the statistics of the gross regional product note: “The creation of corporations operating on the basis of integrated vertical and horizontal schemes has become widespread ... Therefore, the assessment of value added for such divisions is relatively conditional. As a result, in the regions where the parent companies are located, the added value is somewhat overestimated and, on the contrary, in the regions where the divisions of these companies are located, the added value is underestimated” (quoted from: http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site /vvp/met-r.htm).

10 According to Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation. Fuel and Energy Complex of Russia-2014. 2014. June, http://www.ac.gov.ru/files/publication/a/ /5451.pdf.

12 Notes to the balance sheet and income statement financial results JSC RN Holding for 2013. http://rnholding.org/.

13 In this case, this applies not only to Russian, but also to foreign companies.

14 Local content is usually understood as an increase in value added in a country (region) directly or indirectly, through multiplier effects, due to the implementation of projects for the extraction and processing of natural resources by transnational corporations.

References / References

Blyakhman L. S., Zyabrikov V. V.(2015). The strategy of horizontal integration of firms: world and Russian trends // Problems of modern economics. Jsfe 2, pp. 27-37.

Dementiev V. E.(2000). Financial and industrial groups in the strategy of reforming the Russian economy // Russian Economic Journal. Jsfc 11 - 12. S. 3 - 9.

Dementiev V.V.(2004). Economic power and institutional theory // Questions of Economics. No. 3. S. 50 - 64.

Nefedkin V. I. (2015). “Budget Curse” of Resource Regions // ECO. Jsfe 6, pp. 5-24.

Oyken W. (1996). Fundamentals of national economy. M.: Economics.

Pappe Ya. Sh., Galukhina Ya. S.. (2009). Russian big business: the first 15 years. Economic Chronicles 1993-2008 M.: Ed. HSE house.

Pliskevich H. M.(2015). Transformation of the power-property system in Russia: a regional aspect. Reforms and the quality of the state // World of Russia. JM? 1. S. 8 - 34.

Tyrol J.(1996). Markets and Market Power: A Theory of Industrial Organization. St. Petersburg: School of Economics.

Perroux F.(1950). The domination effect and modern economic theory. Social Research, Vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 188-206.

Rothschild K.(1971). power in economics. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Samuel W.(ed.) (1979). The economy as a system of power. New Jersey: Transaction Books.

Williamson O.(1981). The economics of organization: Transaction cost approach. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 87, no. 3, pp. 548-577.

Young D.(1995). The meaning and role of power in economic theories. In: J. Groenewegen, Ch. Pitelis, S.-E. Sjostrand (eds.). On economic institutions: Theory and applications. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, pp. 85 - 100.

Original taken from chispa1707

Recently, the world was shocked by sensational news - the capitalization of the Bitten Apple company exceeded $ 700 billion.

But that's not all:

"The investor and the main shareholder of Apple, Carl Icahn, estimated the value of one share of this company at $216, which is $91 higher than their current value. According to Icahn, Apple's capitalization should be about $1.3 trillion" (RBC)

Let's leave the question of the fairness of such a fantastic share price, and accept as a fact that Apple is the world's largest company. Let's ask a simple but delicate question, who owns this company, at a cost equal to the budgets of several European countries combined?

It would seem that the quote from RBC clearly states that the main shareholder is a certain Karl Aikan, an eccentric billionaire, a cynical business shark, a well-known raider and extortionist, a brawler and much more. Actually, it is he who is most often mentioned in the media as the main shareholder and newsmaker. There is also Tim Cook - Apple's CEO (the one that is officially gay), but he is a figure appointed by shareholders, that is, he is not the owner in any way.

However, upon closer examination of the situation, we find amazing fact- Billionaire Carl Icahn owns only 1 (one) percent of Apple shares. Of course, the cost of even one percent is a huge amount, but it's only one hundredth!

Where is the rest?

The question is not that hidden, but on the example of the same RBC, it is not only hushed up, but also openly falsified in the media.

Is it really difficult to look at open and completely official data from the register of shareholders? There is nothing easier, and we can easily do it ourselves:

Vanguard Group Inc. (The) 5.68%

State Street Corporation 4.11%

BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A. 2.72%

Bank of New York Mellon Corporation 1.42%

Northern Trust Corporation 1.39%

BlackRock Fund Advisors 1.21%

Amazing. discovery, but Carl Icahn is not even among the top ten shareholders of Apple! Who are these mysterious real owners?

In the first place is the Vanguard Group - for the uninitiated reader, and for many economists the name is unfamiliar, although in any reference book you can find information that the company controls assets of as much as 2 trillion dollars (2000 billion dollars). Which is three times the cost of the same Apple! These are the humble ones. In fact, the amount of assets under their control is several times larger, but we will analyze this later.

Before proceeding to a further analysis of the structure of shareholders and ownership, a small lyrical digression should be made.

The ideals of democracy(C) and the media image that serves as a screen for the true owners do not sit well with the fact that all the world's largest companies are owned by the same bunch of people. How to hide this apparent contradiction? Everything is very simple - you need to create the appearance that there are supposedly many owners (shareholders) and they are all "different".

Indeed, how can the "masters of the world" have a miserable 5-6% of the shares? Yes, any liberal will laugh in your face if you tell him this. The fact that these "pathetic six percent" cost forty-fifty billion dollars does not bother anyone - with such a modest package, it is already a problem to securely appoint your own general director. To completely control a company with a turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars, twenty percent is required - no more is needed, since it is impossible for competitors to collect a bag of more than 20% (it will cost under a hundred yards of $).

And suddenly, some Chinese will buy as much as seven percent of the shares and they will be able to run everything in the largest American company?

"Don't be like this!" - the real masters of the world decided a long time ago and secured themselves.

To understand how they exercised total control and maintained the appearance of the absence of one owner, we return to our list of shareholders. Company in second place:

State Street Corporation - owns 4.11%

And who are they, the ordinary reader will ask?

And again, Google (yahoo) to help us:

And who are its largest shareholders?

1.Massachusetts Financial Services Co (Canadian Insurance Company- who owns confused)

2.Price (T.Rowe) Associates Inc - 7%

3.Vanguard Group (where without him!) - 6%

4. BlackRock (the turn will come to him soon!) - 5%

We look even deeper who is the shareholder of Price (T.Rowe) Associates Inc.

and we see all the same acquaintances: Vanguard and BlackRock (remember this name, they often meet, going hand in hand with our main character)

That is, in exactly the same manner, the monster Vanguard controls the second main shareholder of Apple! A simple trick and ten percent of the apple's shares are already in your pocket. But that's not all!

In the top ten there are two offices with the similar name BlackRock & BlaBla and the third time the BlackRock name is mentioned in State Street shareholders. (by the way, Vanguard has such subsidiaries dozens - so it’s not a fact that we can even approximately count all their possessions - even the largest ones)

Naturally, among the owners of BlackRock we find all the same faces:

We add another four percent and we already get 14% of all Apple shares held by one office - Vanguard! And again, that's not all.

What else is left among the dummy owners of Yabluka?

FMR LLC (Fidelity Management and Research), Fidelity Investments similarly, we will find exactly identical names among the shareholders: Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street and so on.

That is, Fidelity is again controlled by the Vanguard Group!

Total: in the piggy bank "modest" 17%.

A wonderful scheme of mutual ownership and cross-corporation. And if any of the shareholders seems not directly related to Vanguard, then its shareholders are definitely under their control, and even in the third iteration (level) it will be the same.

That is Vanguard:

1. Officially - the main shareholder of Apple. For comparison, the clown who publicly portrays the largest shareholder of Apple - Carl Icahn has only 1% of the shares, which is five times less than one of this package.

2. Vanguard also has the largest stakes in almost every other company that owns large stakes in Apple. But even that is not enough!

3. Vanguard, not only owns the largest stakes of shares, but also controls the shareholders of companies from point 2. !!!

And in conclusion, a quote from Tatyana Volkova's blog in the topic:

About the octopus, the pyramid - and in general the continuation of the Vanguard

This is the picture that has emerged to date of the investigation. The largest companies in the world are banks Bank of America, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Let's see who their biggest shareholders are.

Bank of America: State Street Corporation, Vanguard Group, BlackRock, FMR (Fidelity), Paulson, JP Morgan, T. Rowe, Capital World Investors, AXA, Bank of NY, Mellon.

JP Morgan: State Street Corp., Vanguard Group, FMR, BlackRock, T. Rowe, AXA, Capital World Investor, Capital Research Global Investor, Northern Trust Corp. and Bank of Mellon.

Citigroup: State Street Corporation, Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Paulson, FMR, Capital World Investor, JP Morgan, Northern Trust Corporation, and Fairhome Capital Mgmt and Bank of NY Mellon.

Wells Fargo: Berkshire Hathaway, FMR, State Street, Vanguard Group, Capital World Investors, BlackRock, Wellington Mgmt, AXA, T. Rowe and Davis Selected Advisers.

Then check for yourself. The largest financial companies are fully controlled by ten institutional and/or fund shareholders, from which it is possible to single out the core of four companies, present in all cases and in all decisions: Vanguard, Fidelity, BlackRock and State Street. All of them "belong to each other", but if you carefully balance the shareholdings, it turns out that in reality Vanguard controls all of its partners or "competitors", that is, Fidelity, BlackRock and State Street.

Now let's look at the "tip of the iceberg".

That is, a few selected as the largest companies in various industries controlled by this "Big Four" and, on closer examination, simply Vanguard Corporation: Alcoa Inc. Altria Group Inc., American International Group Inc., AT&T Inc., Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc., Coca-Cola Co., DuPont & Co., Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co., General Motors Corporation, Hewlett- Packard Co., Home Depot Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan Chase & Co., McDonald's Corp., Merck & Co. Inc., Microsoft Corp. ., 3M Co., Pfizer Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., United Technologies Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, CBS Corporation, NBC Universal...

Already, even the media does not deny that the world is ruled by corporations. There are many transcontinental corporations, but how independent they are from each other. We then think that they are all on their own, compete with each other, go bankrupt, expand. But is everything as it looks on the surface? Let's start our investigation with Apple. Is its cost equal to the budgets of several European countries combined? Who owns this company?

The quote from RBC clearly states that the main shareholder is a certain Karl Icahn, an eccentric billionaire, a cynical business shark, a well-known raider and extortionist, a brawler and much more. Actually, it is he who is most often mentioned in the media as the main shareholder and newsmaker. There is also Tim Cook - the CEO of Apple (gay), but he is a figure appointed by shareholders, that is, he is not the owner in any way.

However, after carefully studying the situation, we discover an amazing fact - the billionaire Carl Icahn only owns one (1) percent of Apple shares. Of course, the cost of even one percent is a huge amount, but it's only one hundredth!

Who bit off the rest Apple?

The question is not that hidden, but on the example of the same RBC, it is not only hushed up, but also openly falsified in the media.

Is there open and completely official data from the register of shareholders? There is nothing easier, and we can easily do it ourselves:

Vanguard Group Inc. (The) 5.68%

State Street Corporation 4.11%

BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A. 2.72%

Bank of New York Mellon Corporation 1.42%

Northern Trust Corporation 1.39%

BlackRock Fund Advisors 1.21%

An amazing discovery, but Carl Icahn is not even among the ten largest shareholders of Apple! Who are these mysterious real owners?

In the first place is the Vanguard Group - for the uninitiated reader, and for many economists the name is unfamiliar, although in any reference book you can find information that the company controls assets of as much as 2 trillion dollars (2000 billion dollars). This is three times the cost of the same Apple! These are the humble ones. In fact, the amount of assets under their control is several times larger, but we will analyze this later.

Before proceeding to a further analysis of the structure of shareholders and ownership, a small lyrical digression should be made.

The ideals of democracy(C) and the media image that serves as a screen for the true owners do not sit well with the fact that all the world's largest companies are owned by the same bunch of people. How to hide this apparent contradiction? Everything is very simple - you need to create the appearance that there are supposedly many owners (shareholders) and they are all “different”.

Indeed, how can the "masters of the world" have a miserable 5-6% of the shares? Yes, any liberal will laugh in your face if you tell him this. The fact that these "pathetic six percent" cost forty-fifty billion dollars does not bother anyone - with such a modest package, it is already a problem to securely appoint your own CEO. To completely control a company with a turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars, twenty percent is required - no more is needed, since it is impossible for competitors to collect a bag of more than 20% (it will cost under a hundred yards of $).

And suddenly, some Chinese will buy as much as seven percent of the shares and they will be able to run everything in the largest American company?

"Don't be like this!" - the real masters of the world decided a long time ago and secured themselves.

We are looking for shareholders of shareholders

To understand how they exercised total control and maintained the appearance of the absence of one owner, we return to our list of shareholders. Company in second place:

State Street Corporation - owns 4.11%

And who are they, the ordinary reader will ask?

And again, Google (yahoo) to help us:

And who are its largest shareholders?

1.Massachusetts Financial Services Co (Canadian insurance company - who owns is confusing)

2.Price (T.Rowe) Associates Inc - 7%

3.Vanguard Group (where without him!) - 6%

1. BlackRock (it'll be his turn soon!) - 5%

We look even deeper who is the shareholder of Price (T.Rowe) Associates Inc.

and we see all the same acquaintances: Vanguard and BlackRock (remember this name, they often meet, going hand in hand with our main character)

That is, in exactly the same manner, the Vanguard monster controls the second major shareholder of Apple! A simple trick and ten percent of the apple's shares are already in your pocket. But that's not all!

In the top ten there are two offices with the similar name BlackRock & BlaBla and the third time the BlackRock name is mentioned in State Street shareholders. (By the way, Vanguard has dozens of such subsidiaries - so it’s not a fact that we can even approximately count all their possessions - even the largest ones).

Naturally, among the owners of BlackRock we find all the same faces:

We add another four percent and we already get 14% of all Apple shares held by one office - Vanguard! And again, that's not all.

What else is left among the dummy owners of Yabloko?

FMR LLC (Fidelity Management and Research), Fidelity Investments similarly, we will find exactly identical names among the shareholders: Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street and so on.

That is, Fidelity is again controlled by the Vanguard Group!

Total: in the piggy bank "modest" 17%.

Wonderful mutual ownership and cross-corporation scheme. And if any of the shareholders seems not directly related to Vanguard, then its shareholders are definitely under their control, and even in the third iteration (level) it will be the same.

That is Vanguard (Vanguard):

1. Officially - the main shareholder of Apple. For comparison, the clown who publicly portrays the largest shareholder of Apple - Carl Icahn has only 1% of the shares, which is five times less than one of this package.

Vanguard also holds the largest stakes in almost every other company that holds large stakes in Apple. But even that is not enough!

Vanguard, not only owns the largest blocks of shares, but also controls the shareholders of companies from point 2. !!!

Other major corporations

This is the picture that has emerged to date of the investigation. The largest companies in the world are banks:

• bank of america,
• JP Morgan,
• citi group,
• Wells Fargo,
• Goldman Sachs
• Morgan Stanley.

Let's see who their biggest shareholders are

Bank of America: State Street Corporation, Vanguard Group, BlackRock, FMR (Fidelity), Paulson, JP Morgan, T. Rowe, Capital World Investors, AXA, Bank of NY, Mellon.

JP Morgan: State Street Corp., Vanguard Group, FMR, BlackRock, T. Rowe, AXA, Capital World Investor, Capital Research Global Investor, Northern Trust Corp. and Bank of Mellon.

Citigroup: State Street Corporation, Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Paulson, FMR, Capital World Investor, JP Morgan, Northern Trust Corporation, and Fairhome Capital Mgmt and Bank of NY Mellon.

Wells Fargo: Berkshire Hathaway, FMR, State Street, Vanguard Group, Capital World Investors, BlackRock, Wellington Mgmt, AXA, T. Rowe and Davis Selected Advisers.

Then check for yourself. The largest financial companies are fully controlled by ten shareholders, of which a core of four companies can be distinguished, present in all cases and in all decisions:

• vanguard,
• fidelity,
• black rock
• state street.

They all 'belong to each other', but if you carefully balance out your shareholdings, you'll find that Vanguard actually controls all of these partners or 'competitors'. It turns out that corporations in the amount of 4 pieces rule the world, but this is not the whole truth, because the most important of them is Vanguard.

Now let's look at the "tip of the iceberg"

That is, a few, selected as the largest, companies in various industries controlled by this ‘Big Four’, and on closer inspection - just Vanguard Corporation:

• Alcoa Inc.
• Altria Group Inc.,
• American International Group Inc.,
• AT&T Inc.
• boeing co.,
• Caterpillar Inc.,
• coca-cola co.,
• DuPont & Co.,
• Exxon Mobil Corp.,
• General Electric Co.,
• General Motor Corporation,
• Hewlett Packard Co.,
• Home Depot Inc.,
• Honeywell International Inc.,
• intel Corp.,
• International Business Machine Corp.,
• johnson & johnson,
• JP Morgan Chase & Co.,
• McDonald's Corp.,
• Merck & Co. Inc.,
• Microsoft Corporation,
• 3M Co.,
• Pfizer Inc.
• Procter & Gamble Co.,
• United Technologies Corp.
• Verizon Communications Inc.,
• Wal-Mart Stores Inc. time warner,
• Walt Disney,
• Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation,
• CBS Corporation,
• NBC Universal...

We did not reveal the names of the people, but we did a little bit with the names of their legal entities.

Country: Latvia
Edition: Baltic News Network
Date of publication of the article: April 27, 2012

10 corporations that rule the world

Turns out, most of the goods we buy come from only ten of the world's most powerful corporations. A huge selection is just an illusion, writes Business Insider.

For example, Unilever makes everything from Dove soap to Klondike chocolate. In its turn Nestle owns shares of L'Oreal, which offers not only cosmetics, but also Diesel jeans.

Despite the wide range of brands, in the end, all sales revenues end up in the hands of ten giant enterprises.
Original article

Corporations that rule the world

RB.ru tried to gather TNCs that most influence the global economy

The influence of transnational corporations (TNCs) on the economy of various countries of the world is constantly growing. Today, the largest corporations can dictate terms not only to their competitors, but also to entire states - thanks to their financial power and political lobbying at the highest levels. The income of these corporations exceeds the GDP of many countries of the world, they create millions of jobs in each state, some of them are already state-forming from an economic point of view.

The American business magazine Forbes published a rating of the two thousand largest and most influential companies in the world following the results of 2010. This rating includes companies from 62 countries. Including 515 companies from the USA, 210 from Japan, 113 from China, 56 from India, 62 from Canada.

The rating is based on an analysis of the work of the elite companies of the world, among which the most successful global giants stand out, which set the tone in the industry economy of the world. JP Morgan Chase is recognized as the most influential company in the world. The top five also included General Electric, Bank of America, American oil and gas corporation Exxon Mobil and Chinese bank ICBC.

The Partnership for a New American Economy has published an alternative ranking of The New American Fortune - 500. After the Forbes list, this is the second most important corporate ranking. At the end of 2010, it was headed by the American retail network Wal-Mart Stores with annual consolidated revenue of $421.8 billion. Followed by the Dutch Royal Dutch Shell and American Exxon Mobil - $378.2 billion and $354.7 billion respectively. For comparison, the expenditure side of the German budget in 2011 is 305.8 billion euros (almost $438 billion).

According to experts, corporations from this rating provided the world economy with 10 million jobs, and their total income exceeds the GDP of any country in the world, with the exception of China and Japan, amounting to $4.2 trillion. The top lines of the ranking are occupied by such companies as Apple, Google, AT&T, Budweiser, Colgate, eBay, General Electric, IBM and McDonald´s.

Amazing Facts

Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 52 are multinational corporations, the rest are states. Over 2/3 foreign trade and about half of world industrial production is accounted for by TNCs. They control approximately 80% of technological innovations and know-how.

The total volume of accumulated foreign direct investment exceeds $4 trillion, and the volume of sales of TNCs is 25% of the world, and 1/3 of TNC products are produced by affiliated foreign structures. The volume of sales of foreign structures of TNCs already exceeds all world exports.

For example, half of US export operations are carried out by American and foreign TNCs, in the UK, up to 80% of TNCs carry out similar operations, in Singapore - up to 90%.

Transnational banks (TNB), dominating the national and international financial markets, are quite capable of changing the mutual parity of any two national currencies.

TNK enterprises employ more than 73 million people, who annually produce products worth more than $1 trillion. Including related industries, TNCs have provided jobs for 150 million people.

By main economic indicators, such as turnover, income, number of employees, large corporations outperform many developing countries. This is the main concern of experts and analysts about the possibility of negative economic and political pressure of companies on small countries.

TNCs control individual commodity markets: 90% of the world market for wheat, coffee, corn, timber, tobacco and iron ore, 85% for copper and bauxite, 80% for tea and tin, 75% for crude oil, natural rubber and bananas.

Russian corporations are far from the world giants

The Russian gas monopoly Gazprom took only 16th place in the latest Forbes list of the most powerful titans of the world market, however, becoming one of the leaders among the leading companies in the oil and gas sector. According to the publication, the profit of "Gazprom" amounted to $ 24.3 billion, the market value - $ 133.6 billion.

Russian LUKOIL and Rosneft, according to American journalists, occupy 69th and 77th lines in this world ranking. The oil and gas sector is represented in this ranking by 115 companies from all over the world.

Russia, like other post-socialist countries, does not play a significant role in the international movement of capital. 96-97% of international capital flows circulate among developed countries. Developing countries account for only 3-4%.

Impact on the world

Many multinational corporations have monopoly power. Some of them outnumber countries in terms of turnover, and the leaders of these companies, as a rule, do business directly with heads of state.

Transnational corporations, represented in many countries of the world, are able to influence all spheres of public life. And the largest and most powerful are even able to evade economic and political control. There have been cases in history when foreign investors won support for their actions from the political leadership, regardless of their consequences for the local population and the welfare of the country as a whole.

Typically, such diktat is carried out with the use of serious support from politicians, diplomats and the media. There are many examples of such activities. Thus, in 2003, the American company Halliburton signed a contract for the restoration of infrastructure facilities in Iraq for $680 million.

How one company was able to raise the personal income of the entire country

In 2003, Bill Gates paid the first dividend that increased Americans' personal income by a record 3.7%. This profit ended up in the pockets of 4.6 million Americans.