Foundation Ownership Around the World

A number of important companies around the world are owned by foundations known in the literature as enterprise foundations. In this chapter, we provide a tentative first impression of the extent of foundation ownership around the world by tapping into preliminary research results from an ongoing research project. We find that foundation-owned companies are rare at the global level, accounting for an estimated 0.6% of listed companies, 1.1% of global market capitalization and 0.002% of companies worldwide. However, in some European countries like Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, they are economically very significant, in some cases (like notably Denmark) accounting for more than 60% of total market capitalization. The most obvious explanation for such national variations appears to be differences in regulation – for example, differences in foundation law and taxation.