Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

[Bosonic]

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere. But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

...

The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used


http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

[Warpy]

1. I only have a small amount of stock in two of those and it's in a mutual fund

and I expect one of them to be dumped within the next week or so. If I owned it outright, I'd have dumped it five years ago when I inherited it, like I did a few others, all of which turned out to be great decisions.

[FarCenter]

2. Interesting, but these aren't the real owners

Barclays, for example, owns share in companies that are in its ETF portfolios, but the shares in the portfolios are owned by others.

FMR Corporation is better known as Fidelity, and it is holding shares for its customers.

Other networks, like who sits on which Boards of Directors, are probably more interesting and more meaningful in terms of power relationships. Even then, Directors may just be errand boys for major shareholders in private equity funds and hedge funds.

[PETRUS]

3. you might like this

http://www.theyrule.net/

You can explore the networks down the level of individual people.

Ownership, meaning who holds the stocks, is VERY concentrated. And the little bit that the bottom 80% owns is mostly held by mutual funds, 401k plans, etc., which does not translate into meaningful power - the voting rights are exercised not by the individual owners, but by professional money managers who routinely support "1%er" policies.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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[pnorman]

5. "Capitalistic Network"--- K & R!

n/t

[undergroundpanther]

6. The old bully boy network

The way these assholes are connected remind me of bacterial blooms on a petri dish