Public Utilities

In this chapter, Colin Haslam, Adam Leaver, and Nick Tsitsianis show how those managing seemingly ordinary firms, such as public utilities, can use corporate forms to maximize how the firm integrates financial and productive assets. The authors show how firms dealing with water use global wealth chains to manipulate how profit is accounted for to heighten the power of the firm. Their case focuses on how the firm acts as a conduit between debt markets and financial returns, with extensive use of subsidiaries to coordinate this activity. Lead firms maintain tight control over the financial and legal technologies involved, presenting a mix of captive and hierarchy wealth chains. The authors detail how accounting and financial engineering allows managers to use multijurisdictional corporate forms to concentrate financial control.