I do wonder how many people know that the wealthiest companies are private, just like how the wealthiest people/families/syndicates do not publish nor reveal their wealth in any meaningful way. It's like the universe's dark matter. At some point, money becomes power, and power always whispers.
That given of course varies on the highly variable price of petroleum commodities, but given the oligopolistic nature of the O&G industry, getting subsidies to tide over the bad times and prevent extensive capital depreciation is reasonably easy.
Saudis make a lot of crude, and the crude they pump is good quality. Hence, they print money.
With all that said, the 2015 oil price collapse did lead to significant reductions in domestic production, and it was partially driven by Saudi Arabia.
Also, unlike the 1970s Saudi now has a much larger and ridiculously fast growing population - growing anywhere between 2 and 6% per annum since the 1980s. There is an enormous welfare state with very few taxes collected (on the basis the oil wealth pays for everything), but with a population growing so fast it is stretching the budget.
This means KSAs power to hold prices low actually probably hurts them more than the US now - the social contract in KSA is that the government looks after you, and if you suddenly stop getting healthcare/housing etc because of a OPEC/US oil, it will start destabilising the country which obviously the royal family as terrified of.
Some of the largest companies are state-run. If that's what you mean by "private" companies, then yes this is true. But I think that when people say "private" company, they generally envision wealthy individual or family owners, not state owned entities.
If by private, you do mean wealthy individuals/families and not states, then this is doubtful. Apple sold over $200 million iphones last year at a large profit margin, and that is why they are a giant company. Even with exceptionally high revenues per employee, Apple employs over 100,000 people. It's not easy to just disguise what you're doing at that level. There are definitely some very wealthy families out there whose finances are opaque. However, it's doubtful that any of them are secretly running companies anywhere near the scale of Apple.
Big, fully private companies are quite fascinating. (I think we're settling on a definition that involves a tight inner circle of ownership, with no stock-market listing and no government control). But they are pretty lightly represented in revenue/size-based lists like the Fortune 500.
Isn't this exactly the opposite of how power has worked for 99% of human history? In order to establish exactly who's in charge, rulers and those in power have:
- Toured their lands
- Displayed strength via military
- Distributed their likeness (coinage, statues, paintings)
- Spread their messages via radio/television
- Established themselves as the head of organized religion
- Required homage
- Positioned themselves as figures of veneration
Historically, powerful lobbies such as the church, noble classes and guilds did the same types of things.
In modern times, the same thing happens - Putin isn't particularly shy about his degree of power (but I suppose he is deceptive about his wealth).
I believe one example of this was how Napoleon III lost the favor of Alexis de Tocqueville, and hence was toppled as Emperor of France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville
One that surprised me was Fidelity investments. It's huge company held privately by a single family. Not centuries old and probably nowhere near as profitable as Apple though.
There are restaurants in the U.S. that are a couple of centuries old. They might own the building by now.
Well then this was a misleading thing to say. You don't know that this is true
I think what I meant more was the conflation of wealth and power, and the need to look beyond just the name of a certain corporation. Autocratic rulers don't technically run a corporation nor sit on the board, but I doubt anybody would defy their orders if asked. In that sense, they do "own" the corporation. This is also not mentioning the nature of shell and holding corporations which obfuscate liability and ownership, but operate according to their owner's wishes despite their disjoint legal nature.
But no I can't find any proof that any are bigger than the largest publicly traded corporations, so again, sorry.
> Founded in 1865, it is the largest privately held corporation in the United States in terms of revenue. If it were a public company, it would rank, as of 2015, number 15 on the Fortune 500, behind McKesson and ahead of AT&T.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill
The OP's claim about the "largest companies being private" isn't exactly true...
McKesson is a drug wholesaler, so if they buy a case of an expensive drug for $999K and sell it for $1M, that’s $1M in revenue.