[K0SM0S]

My initial instinct exactly, because major corps are global now, which means they can easily set up shop anywhere on Earth: subsidiaries, but also quasi-independent structures which might only be related through distant funding or meta-agreements.

So you can be an American company with tons of "friends" in the EU, Asia, Latin American and now Africa, doing stuff (research, product) and you would just happen to buy/sell from/through these independent actors. Fiction-Google: “Oh but that's not us! It's Oogleg, a Swiss company! It's true 95% of our private shareholders also have shares in Oogleg, but that's only circumstancial, these are large funds you know... they actually have shares in 95% of businesses altogether through ETFs and mutual funds dilution. + some legalese blabla.”

There goes your protectionism, State governments! You'll get your import taxes for physical goods and on-prems services but overall, it certainly won't impede or even touch the thriving heads, the global leaders of the business world. Not anymore. That was in another time, before global networks.

And actually, we might think Fortune 100, perhaps 1,000; but in truth it's probably much more (cue 80% of GDP in the form of SMBs) because how do you enforce a restriction on remoting to contribute to some repo somewhere?

Note that this is true as of 2020, factually from a technical standpoint, but given a few decades and some generalized country-based firewalls (it's coming, in all likelihood) + convenient surveillance and you get all the means necessary to enforce such policies anew.

[perl4ever]

I don't understand why you mention ETFs. If Google said it was meaningless that they were in a total market index fund with almost every other public company, then they would be right. But whether they were or weren't they could do business with somebody just the same. Did you think that companies can't interact if they're not subsidiaries of the same organization? Not only can they do whatever they want bilaterally, but often companies or other organizations set up a joint board or company or something with representatives to work on something of common interest. It probably has to be done the right way to avoid antitrust, but it's done a lot, and by government agencies too. This is not a mutual fund or ETF; the joint entity is controlled by the members, not vice versa.

[K0SM0S]

Oblig. disclaimer, IANAL and not a financial advisor either.

> Did you think that companies can't interact if they're not subsidiaries of the same organization?

Of course not :) I however wonder if defending anti-trust from a subsidiary strategy would work — at least in France, I'm pretty sure taking half your execs and hiring them in a subsidiary which you control will NOT get you past anti-trust regulation.

You might say "but it's legal!" and the judge will kindly ask you not to mock the court by disingenuously failing to address the case at hand — are you or are you not effectively in a monopoly, or cartel situation? Legal or not in terms of legal structure doesn't matter because antitrust is 'above' in the hierarchy of norms (so to speak, my law studies are really far away now, and I was more into public than private law).

Case in point though, shareholding is even legally restricted in some sectors (e.g. media, and that was a strong motivation for e.g. Facebook trying not to be filed as a media group, at least in the EU).

I have absolutely no idea how this would fly in the US. I bow to your expertise, here.

A good example, I think, will be the shareholding structure of Libra (if it ever comes to fruition), where many actors essentially hide their participation behind layers of companies, like some onion (there was a good infographic which you might google on the topic). It's legal, technically, but would it stand in front of a supreme court antitrust case?

As far as I know from history, even legal lines tend to become blurry in major antitrust cases because these are, by essence, out-of-bounds of 'normal' operation, they're fringe cases that sometimes requires a new ad hoc law to take where we want to (I seem to remember elements of Teddy Roosevelt's opposition with Rockefeller, details of the Bell system breakup too, but I'm really not sure. Here in the EU, it's really common —all things considered— to just make new law whenever the current letter fails to live up to the desired spirit).

Thank you for the remarks, I'll probably refrain from speaking about antitrust in the US until I have a better understanding of those.

[perl4ever]

I don't have any expertise in either area, I was just trying to say that "X owns Y" <> "Y owns X".

And it seems common for A, B, C, ... to jointly govern Z, without antitrust problems, like (first thing I could find) the W3C.