Our study used a database of shareholdings in the 299 largest publicly-listed global corporations from the Bureau van Dijk global database of corporations, OSIRIS. Individuals or families held only a minimal proportion (3.3%), and industrial companies held relatively little.īanks were the most common specific type of individual or organisation that controlled the shareholdings in very large corporations. Our 2009 study found that various forms of financial capital controlled the great majority (68.4%) of shares in the world’s very large corporations. When one organisation alone controls more than 6% of shares in very large global corporations, and 30 control more than half of all shares in these corporations, that signifies very high concentration. We (David and Georgina) first researched this in 2009, and we’ve since found that the trend is of increasing concentration in several countries over three decades. The same organisations – usually finance capital, rarely families or individuals – own these public companies. When people say share ownership is highly diversified, they think most large public corporations have lots of shareholders – and often the largest shareholder has less than 15%, sometimes less than 5%, of the total shareholdings.īut looking at it this way obscures the concentration that is taking place.
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