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Mergers do not safeguard firms from long-term decline in terms of market share and profitability. The lack of sophisticated hierarchical corporate structures and vertical integration is evident in British industry compared to American and German industry. There is also a prevalence of unsophisticated corporate structures and personal management that can be observed after mergers take place. This chapter analyses how unsophisticated management techniques and corporate structures hindered the development of the progressively concentrated British industry. The consistency and pervasiveness of the strategy and structure of the British-owned motor manufacturers prior to 1968 reveals a path dependence that lead to the creation of unique British characteristics, which can be compared to characteristics of multinational and international rivals.

This chapter focuses on three particular elements of business systems: firm ownership; managerial control; and the careers of managerial élites. It draws on other wider data concerning these elements, but also treats its own particular companies as broadly representative of the national systems in which they play such an important part. It establishes both how distinct these three central institutional structures of ownership, control, and careers between countries and how stable they are over time. It recognises a continuum regarding the importance of national institutions for strategy and structure. It considers whether distinctiveness and stability in the three national contexts are still reflected in enduring differences in overall patterns of strategy and structure.

The third case study is a case of delayed and ultimately failed reform. The consumer electronics and small kitchen appliances producer Moulinex entered a crisis like many other large companies in France in the 1980s, but failed to reorganize its corporate governance structure for a long time. Thus, the crisis was prolonged without clear direction for the company, and ultimately, Moulinex entered bankruptcy proceedings in the early 2000s.

The rise of global competition marked by the expansion of the private military and security industry has pushed companies to gain a competitive edge. To secure capital and, occasionally, to signal commitment to accountability in response to competition, some companies have changed their corporate structure and become publicly traded corporations. Publicly traded companies have more stakeholders than private companies; this makes them accountable not only to the clients but also to the public and the media. As publicly traded PMSCs face greater reputational costs for engaging in criminal behavior, they are less likely to commit fraud and human rights abuses and be more military effective than private PMSCs. Data on fraud and human rights abuses in Iraq (2003–2019) show that publicly traded PMSCs exhibit higher levels of corporate professionalism. Greater professionalism by publicly traded PMSCs should help tilt the balance of power in favor of the government and contribute to shorter conflicts.

This chapter presents concluding remarks on the state of the American corporation. The state of American corporate capitalism is the product of a structural and a legal system grounded in a uniquely American tradition and suited to that tradition. That system, however, while conceptually sound and consistent with our democratic ideas of power and responsibility, has gone seriously awry. The chapter argues that the fault lies with nobody in particular and everybody in general. The system has grown and developed in a way that reflects not careful, considered planning, but instead, the unthinking forces of a relatively unconstrained capital market. The chapter discusses how it is both a benefit and a misfortune that the corporate structure is highly sensitive to market pressures. It also reveals that when market actors are thoughtful and controlled, and corporations are restrained by social policy, they are extremely efficient at allocating resources in ways which lead to the production of desirable goods and services.

This chapter focuses on multiple-voting share (MVS) structures, which allow insiders to control governance, thus building the potential for conflicts of interest into the corporation’s own rules. When a firm goes public using an MVS structure, it issues two or more classes of shares, one to the public and another to insiders. The shares that are issued publicly have limited voting rights, while the class issued to insiders carries more voting rights, allowing the insiders to control the company without owning a majority of shares of the firm. This corporate structure disrupts the one-to-one ratio of votes to shares that, in non-MVS firms, gives minority shareholders a voice in the boardroom proportionate to their investment. By allowing issuers to accept public capital without relinquishing control of the corporation, MVS structures raise important questions relating to the rights of investors.

This chapter discusses the invasion of Cuba and Puerto Rico and how it took place at a time when capitalist enterprise in the United States was undergoing a momentous transformation into its modern, corporate structure. The wave of mergers and consolidations of 1898–1904 firmly established the limited liability, joint stock corporation with the ability to hold the stock of other corporations as the essential unit of capitalist industrial enterprise in the United States. While the corporate form and a market for securities had existed in railroads since the 1870s, the transformation of industry and the development of a market for industrial securities took place essentially after 1898. Thus the emergence of the United States as an imperial power in the Caribbean coincided with a historical transformation in the structure of capitalist property.

On numerous occasions, investment treaty tribunals have relied—and in some cases refused to rely—on the principle of good faith to ensure that only bona fide investments and investors are protected under the relevant investment treaty. This chapter reviews the jurisprudence on illegal investments and corporate structuring and attempts to expose the purpose of the principle of good faith within this context. This chapter questions whether tribunals should rely on this principle to restrict the definition of investor and investment or whether the plain meaning of treaty provisions should prevail. Although there may be a small role for the principle of good faith in investment treaty arbitration, particularly where domestic regulation falls short of international standards, an expansive application of the principle should be rejected. Instead, tribunals should focus on treaty language and respect domestic regulation in determining what investments and corporate structures the host state wishes to protect.

This chapter opens with the signature of a secret share swap between Belgium’s two leading brewing companies in 1971. Under this furtive agreement, the dynamics of which are analysed in detail, the breweries see their domestic market share grow even more, to about 60 per cent, and continue the foreign expansion started in the two previous decades, in Europe and Africa. In Belgium, Stella Artois tumbles under the effect of reputation and product quality issues while Piedboeuf surges with the help of its star brand, Jupiler. These evolutions put the corporate governance of Artois and the secret association under strain. In 1987 the two companies end up openly merging under the name Interbrew, following a strategic rethinking of the group’s strategy, structure, and corporate governance as well as a destabilizing tax scandal.

This chapter describes the literature on the history of business in Brazil from the mid–nineteenth century to 1945. It explores the connections between the railways and Argentine governments up to the 1930s. It reviews the regulatory role of the state in relation to company activity, and argues that a unified ‘railway lobby’ able to defend their interests with total success never existed in Argentina. It shows that urbanisation, industrialisation, the transformation of corporate structures, and the expansion in higher education were among the most obvious effect of economic growth in Brazil.

This chapter describes the rise of mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) and the uproar that accompanied it both in West Virginia and in Coal River. The conditions that facilitated MTR in the late 1990s included trends in industry stimulated by neoliberal corporate restructuring, labor relations, politics, government, and regulation. Manifestations of these conditions on multiple scales from federal regulations to local businesses have shaped the battle lines in Coal River. Out of these conditions, the chapter chronicles the emergence of a fresh round of activism against strip mining and the emergence of Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW) within that activism. It also traces the history of Whitesville and Sylvester, two towns that sit side by side in the heart of Coal River.