Protestors around the world who have been saying that 1% of the population controls far too much power will be gratified to learn that social scientists in Switzerland have compiled data that supports this contention.

 

A group of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich has concluded, after analyzing the relationships among 43,060 transnational corporations, that 147 companies control about 40% of the world’s wealth. “In effect,” says James B. Glattfelder, lead author of the study, “less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network.”

 

Using the Orbis 2007 marketing database, which includes “about 37 million economic actors, both physical persons and firms located in 194 countries, and roughly 13 million directed and weighted ownership links,” the Zürich team mapped the interlocking ownerships of the corporations and financial institutions. This allowed them, in their own words, to “present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player.”

 

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” James Glattfelder, one of the researchers, told New Scientist. “Our analysis is reality-based.”

 

Here are the top 10 of the 147 “superconnected companies.” Because the data used was from 2007, Merrill Lynch is listed as a separate entity. It was purchased by Bank of America in September 2008.

 

1. Barclays—the London-based banking and financial services company founded in 1690

2. Capital Group Companies—an investment management organization headquartered in Los Angeles

3. FMR Corporation—a mutual funds and financial services corporation based in Boston

4. AXA—a French insurance group with headquarters in Paris, founded in 1816

5. State Street Corporation—a Boston-based financial services holding company which was founded in 1792

6. JPMorgan Chase—the New York-based banking corporation

7. Legal & General Group—a financial services company founded in 1836 and headquartered in London

8. The Vanguard Group—an investment management company specializing in mutual funds that has headquarters outside of Philadelphia

9. UBS AG—the Swiss financial services company with headquarters in Zürich and Basel

10. Merrill Lynch—the wealth management division of Bank of America

-David Wallechinsky

 

Revealed – the Capitalist Network That Runs the World (by Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist)