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1. Research subject and objectives This study focuses on an economic institution, the large industrial holding company, which continues to hold a prominent if not a strategic position in the resource allocation process in many industrialised market economies. Powerful multicompany combines like the famous Japanese zaibatsu and the less familiar but equally powerful European industrial groups rely on the institution of the holding company to tie their intermarket control network together. Two general questions arise from this situation: first, what factors account for the viability and growth within a market setting of those institutions which internalise allocation decisions and, second, what effect do such institutions have on resource allocation? These questions provide the framework in which the proper research subject can be most adequately introduced. Before doing so, it is crucial to point out that the holding company institution, as analyzed in subsequent chapters, should not be confounded with the legal constructs, bearing the same generic name and flourishing in fiscal paradises, whose sole function is to organise tax evasion across national boundaries. The institution, as studied here, is the large holding company through which industrial groups manage multicompany systems. Such multicompany systems, operating an intermarket network by means of holding companies, continue to be more typical for Europe and Japan than for the United States where, for legal reasons, but also because of managerial efficiency, the multicompany system built around the holding company institution was rather short-lived and 1 the giant integrated multiunit enterprise rose to dominance instead.

I. Introduction.- 1. Research subject and objectives.- 2. What is a holding company?.- 3. Previous literature and the contribution of this study.- 4. Plan of the study.- II. A Powerful Institution.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The history.- 3. The main characteristics of the Belgian holding company system.- 4. International comparison and the reasons for the stability and viability of the holding company.- 5. Managerial organization of control.- 6. Concluding remarks.- III. Holding Companies and Financial Intermediation: Theory.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The basic model: capital-asset-pricing in a two-parameter world.- 3. The case for and against security substitution by holding companies.- 4. Conclusion.- IV. Holding Companies and Security Substitutions: Evidence.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The statistical methodology.- 3. The sample.- 4. The empirical results.- 5. Conclusion.- V. Holding Companies and Corporate Control.- 1. Introduction.- 2. A methodology for measuring the control influences of the holding companies.- 3. Concentration of corporate power in the Belgian economy.- 4. The market for corporate control in Belgium.- 5. Concentration of corporate power and competition.- 6. Conclusion.- VI. Foundations for a Theory of Holding Company Behavior.- 1. Introduction: the holding companies’ problem.- 2. Control for the pure sake of control or power.- 3. Financial and economic benefits to control.- 4. Conclusion.- VII. Holding Companies, Investment Strategy and Economic Growth.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The retardation of the Belgian economy, revisited.- 3. Industrial structure and economic growth.- 4. Conclusion.- VIII. General Conclusion.