[pjc50]

Surviving these millenia requires avoiding the situations where businesses are mass-confiscated or the population is destroyed by disaster. So:

- not being colonised (rules out New World, Africa, middle east, India)

- not going through Communism or one of the less business friendly dictatorships (rules out Eastern Europe, Russia, China etc)

[Cyberdog]

World War II certainly counted as a disaster in both Germany and Japan's case, and both countries had more localized civil strife throughout the millennia as well.

That's not to disprove your point, I suppose, but perhaps to make the perseverance of those companies all the more fascinating.

[pjc50]

Yes, but in both cases the Allies went in without looting intentions and some intent to maintain as much of the surviving society as could be de-Nazified. Very rare in history.

(This is not to say that looting didn't happen; the V2 rocket programme was explicitly looted, for example)