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Comment by belval | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

"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...

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.

“What do you call your act?”

“Brooks Brothers!”

The French newspaper "Le Monde diplomatique" made a very interesting family tree for media ownership in France: https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA

Published on Github too https://github.com/mdiplo/Medias_francais

Ideally, in a democracy, it should be open and transparent who owns what, up to the individual. That should be the basic principle of a free market.

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"

Impractical? Isn't it already being done?

At least here in Norway, I can look up an organization and see all owners of that company last year. And press a button and it calculates the "true"/indirect owners up the chain as well.

I can also go the other way. Select a person, and see what they own through multiple layers of companies.

Interesting.

Is this a public service? Could you please give an url to know more about it? Thanks

All companies have to provide a list of owners each year to our tax agency Skatteetaten ("IRS"). The data isn't exactly publicly available AFAIK, but anyone can ask for access.

This is a company doing extra stuff with the data, and providing some of it directly online. Here's a lookup of the company I work for: https://proff.no/aksjon%C3%A6rer/bedrift/oda-group-holding-a...

It lists owners, but as you can see it's mostly "Holding Companies". However, pressing "Indirekte eierskap og eiere" ("Indirect ownerships") one can see the true companies or persons behind those.

Very insightful, thank you!

there is no rational comparison to the economy and laws of Norway, to that of the USA. Even with oil wealth, the population and value of the Norway economy amounts to a tiny percentage of the activity in the USA, and many, many USA-based companies are multinational. Hvordan kan du bruke Norges lover til å styre USA? alvor

Why? What does a system of voting have to with privacy?

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).

Luxottica merged with Essilor in 2018. It's now a French-Italian company.

They own: Ray-Ban, Oakley, Michael Kors, Varilux, Crizal, Transitions, LensCrafters, Clearly, EyeBuyDirect, FramesDirect.com, OPSM, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut, Target Optical, Vision Direct, Vision Source, et al. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EssilorLuxottica

The more interesting/disgusting part is that they own EyeMed, so for many people they also get your insurance premium, and then also what you pay for glasses or whatever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica#Medical_managed_care

I personally view vertical integration much more favorably than the Borg-like horizontal consolidation Luxottica exhibits.

Consider that CostCo does the same thing and members are generally happy about it.

Hm, that looks like a good case for an anti-trust action.

I was thinking of Anta Sports (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anta_Sports) which owns a lot of skiing/mountaineering stuff but I was remembering wrong.

I guess you get good news every day!

I already don't buy Arc'teryx cause their stuff is way over priced but good to have yet another reason not to do so!

I liked their stuff more when it was made in Canada. Some of it is still pretty good and if you get on sale/clearance/used its not that bad. I've had some jackets for 10 years.

Same here - fond memories of visiting the factory to buy seconds in Vancouver. Recently had a bad experience with a failure of a brand new glove followed by lousy customer service - ended up just throwing away the thing. (The plural of anecdote is not data, I know...) But with so many alternatives that don't fund dictatorships I don't see why I should buy their stuff if I don't have too...

"~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]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/923c92/80_...

[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-largest-u-s-companies-bo...

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.

https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Bauer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abercrombie_%26_Fitch

The eyewear conglomerate is Luxottica (Italian, not French).

They merged with Essilor, a French company, in 2018. Technically they are a Franco-Italian company.

EssilorLuxottica (merger in 2018) is a French company with an headquarter in Paris and the stock part of the French index CAC40.

And same for semiconductors. Everything seems to have been consolidating like mad.

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