Ownership Concentration and Control in Large US Corporations in the 1930s: An Analysis of the TNEC Sample

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This paper employs a simple-game-theoretic perspective to analyse the relationship between shareholding concentration and the voting power of leading coalitions among the top 200 non-financial corporations. The power index used to define controlling coalitions is the degree of control of Cubbin and Leech. The results show that, on the basis of observed levels of ownership concentration, control by small coalitions of shareholders was feasible for the majority of companies. There is no evidence on this basis to support a general assumption of a pervasive separation between ownership and control.