Javier García-Bernardo

The University of Amsterdam

Nov 12th, 2017

Nature, origins and political consequences of corporate networks in modern economic life?

corporate networks

Nodes:

  • Companies

 

 

Links:

  • Shared directors
E.M. Heemskerk, F.W. Takes, J. Garcia-Bernardo and M.J. Huijzer ‘Where is the global corporate elite? A large-scale network study of local and nonlocal interlocking directorates‘, Sociologica 2016(2): 1-31, 2016. 
Mr. Jorge Paulo Lemann
- Heinz
- 3G Capital
- AB Inbev
- And another 70 positions

corporate networks

Nodes:

  • Companies
Vitali, Glattfelder and Battiston, The network of global corporate control, PloS one, 2011.

Links:

  • Ownership

IDENTIFYING OFFSHORE FINANCIAL CENTERS

``Uncovering Offshore Financial Centers: Conduits and Sinks in the Global Corporate Ownership Network''

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06322-9

Javier Garcia-Bernardo, Jan Fichtner, Frank Takes, Eelke Heemskerk

OFFSHORE FINANCIAL CENTERS

Offshore Financial Center (OFC): jurisdiction (country) that attracts financial activities from abroad through low taxation and lenient regulation.

  • So, which countries are OFCs?
    • Definitions differ
    • Highly contested and politicized

  • FDI/GDP ratio approach: substantially more Foreign Direct Investment than expected based on GDP

  • Problematic because:
    • No exact investment flows, just dyadic relationships
    • OFC homogeneity assumption
      • Large countries hard to detect
      • No difference in roles

sinks and conduits

We look at which countries are used disproportionally in transnational ownership chains.

ORBIS

- 200 million companies

- 70 million ownership relationships

- 10 million transnational chains

sink-OFCs

sink-OFFshore financial centers

sinks are specialized geographically

siNKS ARE RELATIVELY STABLE OVER TIME

conduit-OFCs

conduit-OFFshore financial centers

decline of the netherlands

findings

  • The Netherlands is the conduit between European companies and Luxembourg, in the middle of 23% country chains.

  • Hong Kong (for China) and Luxembourg (for EU countries) serve as the main countries in the route to ``tax havens''.

  • The United Kingdom is the conduit between European countries and former members of the British Empire, such as Hong Kong, Jersey, BVI and Bermuda.

  • All conduit-OFCs are on our doorsteps, and are specialized geographically and sectorally.

corpnet.uva.nl

@javiergb_com

@uvaCORPNET

javiergb.com

corpnet@uva.nl

garcia@uva.nl

This presentation: slides.com/jgarciab/offshorealert17

OffshoreAlert: sink and conduit OFCs

By Javier GB

OffshoreAlert: sink and conduit OFCs

sink and conduits in Corporate Structures

  • 1,195