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Comment by ig1 | Hacker News Reader

It's not anything new, conglomerates have existed for a long time before the internet age.

For example consider Sony: Sony Computer Entertainment (gaming), Sony Mobile (phones), Sony Pictures (movies), Sony Music (music), Sony Life (insurance), Sony Bank (banking), Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Visual (imaging), Sony Medical (medtech)

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Then there's Samsung, I think they're the largest conglomerate in the world.

My mom would affiliate Samsung with TVs. I'd probably put them with computer monitors and phones.

They also build skyscrapers and power plants (Samsung C&T Corporation), and ships (Samsung Heavy Industries). They also sell Life Insurance in South Korea.

Indeed. Their revenues account for 22% of South Korea's GDP.

Yamaha: musical instruments, motorcycles, outboard motorboat engines…

Westinghouse: TVs and nuclear reactors.

(Really, that's two separate companies which license the brand from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Licensing_Corporat...)

I am not from India, so someone can confirm or deny this, but I hear one can pass a whole day on India just consuming Tata products: from your car, to your food, to your clothes, etc.

Close. As in it's possible, but they don't have dominant market share in many of the industries they have a presence in. Another conglomerate - Reliance - is also in that conversation.

By market cap, I think it's GE. Depends on how you define conglomerate, but they're pretty diverse - financial services, plastics, aircraft engines, consumer goods...

This is correct. GE has been considered a conglomerate for nearly a century now. GE sports a $276 billion market cap, Samsung is at $194 billion.

I'll say however, that Samsung appears vastly undervalued. GE is trading at about 20 times earnings, Samsung is trading at 20 times just its last quarter alone (and around 5 or 6 times trailing four quarters).

Also worth noting, that despite being more profitable than Apple, Samsung trades at a 60% discount to AAPL.

In Hong Kong, Asia's richest billionaire, Mr Li Ka-Shing of Cheung Kong Holdings, owns nearly everything. Anything you do or touch in a day makes Mr Li even richer. His wealth is opaque so he is probably right up there with Bill Gates and Carlos Slim for the #1 spot.

Bloomberg puts him at $28.8B. Not necessarily opaque.

And he recently admitted that only half of his wealth are in stocks. Which actually puts him near the top spot.

Don't forget Mitsubishi.

That's kind of my point. Sony became unfocused and muddled.

Fun fact: Twitter is worth more than Sony. Billions more.

You should see what Samsung is like in South Korea. It's not unusual to get in your Samsung car and drive down a road built and serviced by Samsung construction to the Samsung mall where you arrive at the Samsung grocery store and fill your cart with Samsung products. It works really well for them and has for years.

Or you could say that Sony has remained relevant for 67 years. Will Twitter manage to match that?

Probably not, but no one could have predicted this of Sony when they started out making tape recorders. The initial product does not seem to matter much on this time scale compared to capital and investment prowess. Twitter looks like it is making a pretty strong start on one of those, but we will see what the future holds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony#History

Is your definition of 'worth' based on market cap? I'd imagine the enterprise value of the two companies tell a different story (though I've heard some dark news about Sony in recent years, aren't they still posting billion-dollar profits?)

Checked really quickly, Sony's electronics (from computers to cameras) division market cap is a 34.8bn, I have a number of 34.7bn for twitter.

And Sony as a brand is split in different groups depending on the activities (e.g. finance, music production, content licensing, network provider and who know what else). Twitter's not in the same league.

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