Georgina Murray

Who Rules the World – Ownership and Finance Capital

Published 2010

Publication Type: Conference Publications

Author(s): Murray, Georgina, Peetz, David Robert

This paper examines the relationship of a transnational capitalist class to the nation state through the control that is exercised by virtue of the ownership & direction of equity funds. We use cross-national data on corporate assets, turnover & shareholdings to investigate the direct & indirect ownership & hence control of the world’s 250 largest corporations. We identify key corporations that in turn hold ownership (through shareholdings) that crosses nation-state boundaries & establishes substantial power in relation to nation states. We find that the influence of finance capital extends far beyond the provision of loans to finance corporate expansion. Both directly & indirectly (through funds they administer), finance capital owns or at least controls the ownership of a substantial proportion of largest transnational corporations, to such an extent that the idea of distinguishing fractions of capital between ‘finance capital’, ‘manufacturing capital’ & other sectors of capital becomes increasingly problematic.

View Resource

Recent Articles

• Women, capitalism and education: On the pedagogical implications of postfeminism

• Who owns the world? Tracing half the corporate giants’ shares to 30 owners

• Class and climate: how financial warfare affects the air

• The government is swimming against the tide on Westpac’s Adani decision

• Financial Markets, Climate Change, and Paradoxes of Coordination and Intervention.

• The relationships between children’s behaviour and aspects of work, safety and wellbeing within families of mine and energy workers

• Restrukturierung des Eigentums an großen Unternehmen während der Finanzkrise. Deutschland und die USA im Vergleich,WSI-Mitteilungenx

• Relationships between children’s behaviour and parents’ work within families of mining and energy workers

• Wem gehören die großen Unternehmen? Restrukturierung des Eigentums während der Finanzkrise in Deutschland und den USA

• Work-related influences on marital satisfaction amongst shift-workers and their partners: a large, matched-pairs study,