Trust (economy)
A trust (full English name: trust company ) is a contractually agreed association of several companies . The aim can be to create a market or a production monopoly in order to be able to eliminate competition and thus fix prices. Most of the companies give up legal and economic independence, which then lies with the managing trustees of the holding company , but not participation in the profits of the holding company.
The difference between cartel and trust is that a trust is a combination of several companies into one, while a cartel is a close partnership between two or more. Trusts pursue goals similar to corporations , but can pursue them more efficiently, since the subordinate companies have become completely dependent ("went under").
Concept history
The term trust as a form of company emerged in the USA at the end of the 19th century. The stages of this development were:
- Since 1879 business cartels have been organized in the USA in the legal form of trusts , which had previously only served asset management. The innovation here was Samuel Dodd , the lawyer John D. Rockefeller , who wanted to unite his oil processing cartel more tightly. Cartels in trust form, first and foremost the Standard Oil Trust , overcame the legal uncertainty that was peculiar to the previous American cartels in the form of so-called "pools".
- In response to the antitrust legislation of the Sherman Act of 1890, the trust cartels soon took on other legal forms. You camouflaged z. B. as apparently completely independent companies, but which had an identical capital ownership structure and thus identical majority and interest relationships. The Standard Oil Trust, for example, apparently dissolved in this way, in 1892 into 20 separate companies in the same branch.
- From 1900 onwards, groups of companies that had been brought into line in this way were transformed into industry groups. Typical for this was a holding company, to which the sole proprietorships were now transferred, and an almost monopoly of market coverage. Such trusts existed in a large number of industries outside of the mineral oil sector, e.g. B. the cotton oil trust, the sugar trust, the powder trust, the steel trust, the whiskey trust and the cigarette trust.
- In 1911/12, the first trusts were unbundled by court order, such as Rockefellers Standard Oil, the Powder Trust and the National Lamp Company. The term trust - although completely detached from the original meaning of a certain legal form in the field of business - was retained for large, overwhelmingly dominant companies.
Emergence
A trust can arise in two ways:
- by taking up a company (A buys B)
- through new formation (A and B found C, whereby after the founding of C, companies A and B no longer exist)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Holm A. Leonhardt: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies , Hildesheim 2013, p. 256.
- ^ Holm A. Leonhardt: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies , Hildesheim 2013, p. 858.
- ^ Holm A. Leonhardt: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies , Hildesheim 2013, p. 257.