The network of global corporate control

Abstract

The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic "super-entity" that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.

Figure 1. Ownership and Control.

(A&B) Direct and indirect ownership. (A) Firm has percent of direct ownership in firm . Through , it has also an indirect ownership in and . (B) With cycles one has to take into account the recursive paths, see Appendix S1, Section 3.1. (C&D) Threshold model. (C) Percentages of ownership are indicated along the links. (D) If a shareholder has ownership exceeding a threshold (e.g. ), it has full control (100%) and the others have none (0%). More conservative model of control are also considered see Appendix S1, Section 3.1.

Figure 2. Network topology.

(A) A bow-tie consists of in-section (IN), out-section (OUT), strongly connected component or core (SCC), and tubes and tendrils (T&T). (B) Bow-tie structure of the largest connected component (LCC) and other connected components (OCC). Each section volume scales logarithmically with the share of its TNCs operating revenue. In parenthesis, percentage of operating revenue and number of TNCs, cfr. Table 1. (C) SCC layout of the SCC (1318 nodes and 12191 links). Node size scales logarithmically with operation revenue, node color with network control (from yellow to red). Link color scales with weight. (D) Zoom on some major TNCs in the financial sector. Some cycles are highlighted.

Figure 3. Concentration of network control and operating revenue.

Economic actors (TNCs and shareholders) are sorted by descending importance, as given by . A data point located at () corresponds to a fraction of top economic actors cumulatively holding the fraction of network control, value or operating revenue. The different curves refer to network control computed with three models (LM, TM, RM), see Appendix S1, Section 3.1, and operating revenue. The horizontal line denotes a value of equal to . The level of concentration is determined by the value of the intersection between each curve and the horizontal line. The scale is semi-log.