Family-controlled pyramidal business groups were important in Canada early in the 20th century, amid rapid catch-up industrialization, but largely gave way to widely held freestanding firms by mid-century. In the 1970s and early 1980s ? an era of high inflation, financial reversal, unprecedented state intervention, and explicit emulation of continental European institutions ?
pyramidal groups abruptly regained prominence. The largest of these were politically well-connected and highly leveraged. The two largest collapsed in the early 1990s in a recession characterized by very high real interest rates. The smaller groups that survived were more vertically integrated and less diversified at the time. Widely held freestanding firms and Anglo-Saxon concepts of the role of the state soon regained predominance.
We examine whether common business group affiliation affects media reporting on firms and whether firms experience any real effects as a result. We find...
This study documents how group trademarks, comprising the business group’s name and logo, can be used for the benefit of controlling families at the...