> "Still the owner of a considerable portion of GM stock, Durant began to purchase more shares in the company as his profits from Chevrolet allowed. In a final move to regain control, Durant offered GM stockholders five shares of Chevrolet stock for every one share of GM stock. Though GM stock prices were exorbitantly high, the market interest in Chevrolet made the five-for-one trade irresistible to GM shareholders. With the sale, concluded on May 2, 1918, Durant regained control of GM"
And then after this the DuPont Family effectively controlled GM for quite a while. They previously had a relationship because GM used DuPont paints.
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As to the manufacturer family tree: things get significantly more complicated when you add joint ventures. Ford famously partnered with Mazda, Chrysler partnered with Mitsubishi, and GM partnered with Isuzu and Suzuki and even Toyota for a while (NUMMI). Nowadays GM and Honda have a few codevelopment projects; even the concept of what a joint venture means has significantly changed. My list is this comment is far from authoritative or exhaustive.
The epic "Diamondstar Motors" as I recall. Responsible for generations of kickass cars under different names. Conquest/Starion, Laser/Talon/Eclipse, Stealth/3000GT.
In addition, Chrysler had captive imports from Mitsubishi at least as far back as the 1971 Dodge Colt. The GM/Isuzu and Ford/Mazda relationships went back to the 1970s as well.
> As to the manufacturer family tree: things get significantly more complicated when you add joint ventures.
Yes, and even more complicated because some of those joint ventures where country-specific. For example, in the 80s (and early 90s) due to the economic crisis in Brazil and Argentina, Ford and Volkswagen created the joint venture Autolatina to join forces during the crisis. So both brands shared engines and released sight variations of the same cars.
Oh, the link between GM and leaded gasoline makes more sense in that context.
TEL had been identified chemically in the mid-19th century, but General Motors had discovered its effectiveness as an antiknock agent in 1921, after spending several years attempting to find an additive that was both highly effective and inexpensive.
I always wanted something like this but for all companies. I feel like it would be a great tool to help people understand how giant conglomerates are actually a big part of what we consume.
My favorite are outdoor clothing companies which almost all tie-in to the same Chinese investment fund. Or how glasses companies all belong to that one French conglomerate.
Here ya go (I knew I had seen it somewhere so I'm glad I managed to find it again). Here are some links to assorted sources about brands etc. It makes for fascinating reading imo
That first list is interesting because I recognize most of them as terrible products.
My mental model of brands was as a quality stamp, as in people would recognize a product from advertising but if they disliked the product then it wouldn’t help. But, I think there is a second effect in play. If you start with something of high quality that people consume regularly you can very slowly lower the quality without people noticing. Continue long enough and old brands are going to end up as lower quality.
good direction but impractical.. a tech lead at Starbucks quipped "we don't actually know how many people work at Starbucks right now" .. huh? because, though they do have modern cloudy tech, there is meat-space time involved in edge transition from state of employed to not-employed, etc. So it is true, even with "perfect" observation of events, the leaders have ranges, not hard numbers.
So it is with markets. There are indistinct conditions that may exist for some time, and decay, and financial privacy, etc. So even given "perfect" observation of events, it is not fully transparent.
Nor would you want it, I argue. Once you as an individual are involved with markets and partners and committed relationships, some faceless bureacracy is tracking your parking spending? or more to the point, your ownership stakes? So we must re-invent public markets. Too much to change at once, and imperfect cooperation, so.. set a direction. "messy"
Which brands are you talking about and could you point to something showing the ownership (not doubting you, just wondering). Looking up Patagonia, Columbia, and VF Corp (North Face, Timberland, etc) none of them appear to be Chinese owned, but its quite likely their Wikipedia page is missing info.
I know anta sports (Chinese) owns Arc'teryx and Salomon (and other brands as well), which are both big deals in very niche parts of outdoors companies (mountaineering/climbing and trail running/skiing respectively) but I don't think there's any single Chinese company that owns all the outdoor brands, unless anta is owned by some other company. Luxottica, the eyeglass company gp referred to is also Italian, not French (afaik), and their stranglehold was weakening with online retailers breaking in (last I checked was ~5 years ago, this might have regressed since).
"~80% of the 50 largest public companies are connected to one another through 1 or more shared board member(s)" [1]
The "three most connected companies" through interconnecting directors are "3M (7 connections), Boeing (6 connections) and Amgen (6 connections)" ... "Other highly-connected companies include Walt Disney, Apple, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, IBM, and Procter & Gamble – each has five board members that also serve for other top 50 corporations." [2]
I was recently looking at Tool brands and came across a similar article explaining how all the popular tool brands you know are owned by a handful of corporations.
Whenever I see that chart I feel gratified that I chose Makita when I was making the big battery decision a few years ago.
Personally, I lean to independent brands. I don't want my Milwaukee tools having all the same parts as the Ryobi line - makes me assume I'm being suckered into an identical tool that's way more expensive. Even if the Milwaukee is usually superior, I'm guessing some things just are exact copies with red paint. I'm the same way with say Patagonia over North Face - I'll always avoid VF Corp brands for something that's still building legacy, rather than profiting on historical credibility.
I guess the same is true with previous generation stuff. Abercrombie & Fitch, and Eddie Bauer used to be premier outdoor equipment companies with great down jackets and sleeping bags, fishing equipment, even shotguns. Now they're both brands representing clothes I don't want. Both brands sold and were aggregated with other companies in the late 1980s.
I only skimmed trough it, but the section about Polestar is wrong. It says that their racing division was renamed Lynk & Co. Lynk & Co is a different car brand focusing on a subscription sales model. Polestar's racing division was renamed Cyan Racing. Polestar is also partly owned by Geely, which of course also owns Volvo which owns part of Polestar...
Geely recently bought the mobile phone manufacturer Meizu.
And a few months ago Tesla was valued more than all the brands on the list, combined. If that isn’t a sign of a stock market bubble I don’t know what is.
if apple were worth more than all of the other personal computer makers combined (maybe it is idk) would that also be a sign of a bubble? is that all it takes or does growth rate matter?
Agreed, but remember that if you are thinking about betting against Tesla that the market can stay (much) longer irrational than you can stay solvent. There is a quote from the early 20th century: "Wall Street's graveyards are filled with men who were right too soon."
When VW stocks went through the roof due to a short squeeze a few years ago, a very conservative German billionaire named Adolf Merckle saw that VW's stock value was ridicilously overpriced, so he decided to bet agains the stock. But the stock price went further up and stayed there long enough to make him lose all of his money. He then committed suicide.
Interesting fun fact - the Japanese sub-brands were mostly created to get around US import restrictions. At the time, the US had super imposing quantity limitations on Japanese cars. So the workaround was the companies spun off luxury companies (Lexus, Acura, Infiniti) so they could sell fewer cars at a higher markup.
Acura launched first, since Honda already had a factory in the US (originally for motorcycles). Honda was still smaller than Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Toyota at the time, iirc.
That factory is still the oldest operating, US factory from a foreign automaker.
Amusingly, the import restrictions were "voluntary," as much as geopolitics can be voluntary.
Anyone interested in this should dive into the NHTSA data. Something like “make by manufacturer” explains this quite nicely, albeit without the history that the article nicely explained. Example: https://transportation.report/manufacturer/976/
Readit News
Fun fact: Chevrolet kind of bought GM. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gm-buys-chevrole...
> "Still the owner of a considerable portion of GM stock, Durant began to purchase more shares in the company as his profits from Chevrolet allowed. In a final move to regain control, Durant offered GM stockholders five shares of Chevrolet stock for every one share of GM stock. Though GM stock prices were exorbitantly high, the market interest in Chevrolet made the five-for-one trade irresistible to GM shareholders. With the sale, concluded on May 2, 1918, Durant regained control of GM"
And then after this the DuPont Family effectively controlled GM for quite a while. They previously had a relationship because GM used DuPont paints.
----
As to the manufacturer family tree: things get significantly more complicated when you add joint ventures. Ford famously partnered with Mazda, Chrysler partnered with Mitsubishi, and GM partnered with Isuzu and Suzuki and even Toyota for a while (NUMMI). Nowadays GM and Honda have a few codevelopment projects; even the concept of what a joint venture means has significantly changed. My list is this comment is far from authoritative or exhaustive.
The epic "Diamondstar Motors" as I recall. Responsible for generations of kickass cars under different names. Conquest/Starion, Laser/Talon/Eclipse, Stealth/3000GT.
Yes, and even more complicated because some of those joint ventures where country-specific. For example, in the 80s (and early 90s) due to the economic crisis in Brazil and Argentina, Ford and Volkswagen created the joint venture Autolatina to join forces during the crisis. So both brands shared engines and released sight variations of the same cars.
TEL had been identified chemically in the mid-19th century, but General Motors had discovered its effectiveness as an antiknock agent in 1921, after spending several years attempting to find an additive that was both highly effective and inexpensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead
Video treatment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA
My favorite are outdoor clothing companies which almost all tie-in to the same Chinese investment fund. Or how glasses companies all belong to that one French conglomerate.
"These 10 Companies Own Almost All of the Brands You Use" https://thehomestead.guru/10-companies-own-brands/
https://gizmodo.com/fascinating-graphic-shows-who-owns-all-t...
https://www.dividend.com/how-to-invest/9-companies-that-own-...
https://capitaloneshopping.com/blog/11-companies-that-own-ev...
https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendancoffey/2011/10/26/the-fo...
My mental model of brands was as a quality stamp, as in people would recognize a product from advertising but if they disliked the product then it wouldn’t help. But, I think there is a second effect in play. If you start with something of high quality that people consume regularly you can very slowly lower the quality without people noticing. Continue long enough and old brands are going to end up as lower quality.
Deleted Comment
So it is with markets. There are indistinct conditions that may exist for some time, and decay, and financial privacy, etc. So even given "perfect" observation of events, it is not fully transparent.
Nor would you want it, I argue. Once you as an individual are involved with markets and partners and committed relationships, some faceless bureacracy is tracking your parking spending? or more to the point, your ownership stakes? So we must re-invent public markets. Too much to change at once, and imperfect cooperation, so.. set a direction. "messy"
I guess you get good news every day!
Deleted Comment
The "three most connected companies" through interconnecting directors are "3M (7 connections), Boeing (6 connections) and Amgen (6 connections)" ... "Other highly-connected companies include Walt Disney, Apple, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, IBM, and Procter & Gamble – each has five board members that also serve for other top 50 corporations." [2]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/923c92/80_...
[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-largest-u-s-companies-bo...
https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/
Personally, I lean to independent brands. I don't want my Milwaukee tools having all the same parts as the Ryobi line - makes me assume I'm being suckered into an identical tool that's way more expensive. Even if the Milwaukee is usually superior, I'm guessing some things just are exact copies with red paint. I'm the same way with say Patagonia over North Face - I'll always avoid VF Corp brands for something that's still building legacy, rather than profiting on historical credibility.
I guess the same is true with previous generation stuff. Abercrombie & Fitch, and Eddie Bauer used to be premier outdoor equipment companies with great down jackets and sleeping bags, fishing equipment, even shotguns. Now they're both brands representing clothes I don't want. Both brands sold and were aggregated with other companies in the late 1980s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Bauerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abercrombie_%26_Fitch
Geely recently bought the mobile phone manufacturer Meizu.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/14/tesla-valuation-more-than-ni...
When VW stocks went through the roof due to a short squeeze a few years ago, a very conservative German billionaire named Adolf Merckle saw that VW's stock value was ridicilously overpriced, so he decided to bet agains the stock. But the stock price went further up and stayed there long enough to make him lose all of his money. He then committed suicide.
Amusingly, the import restrictions were "voluntary," as much as geopolitics can be voluntary.