...wasn't that familiar with the gritty details this part of history, but from a simple skimming, I see that things sort of worked-out fine until BEIC shifted its focus from trade and profit to territory grabbing, waring around, and administration. And it started behaving as a nation, probably because it was... all its owners where British nobility, right? That seems to be also when things turned bad for them - they practically went bankrupt but were still artificially kept a float by the then British Empire?

Probably a good lesson to be learned from BEIC for future transnational megacorps: (1) keep your focus on making profit and growing (growing in the do-lots-of-R&D to increase your technological supremacy sense - you probably can't grow marketshare after you're already a monopoly), (2) let governments do the "drawing borders" and maintaining local civil order part, and (3) diversity, diversity, diversity - if all your owners are from one nation and one social-class / race / whatever, you'll be phagocytized or subverted by that nation and/or sub-group.