Control Profiles

Who actually controls the company?

Ownership is not control. Each profile maps economics, votes, board authority, and durability separately, and every claim resolves to the document that establishes it.

Board controlBoard control without ownership

Alibaba Group Holding Limited

Alibaba Partnership

Alibaba has one share, one vote, and no holder above 5%. An 18-member partnership nominates a simple majority of the board and owns almost none of it.

TrustFoundation owned, trustee controlled

Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA

Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft (BVG)

Foundations and the Mohn family own all of Bertelsmann's capital. A separate company with none of it controls every vote at the general meeting.

Control Wedge+100.0pp

Holding chainContested

Castel Group

Castel family

A Singapore trust sits above a Luxembourg holding chain at Castel, so the heirs hold economics without votes and three removal votes changed nothing.

Loyalty votingWorking control, no majority

Ferrari N.V.

Exor N.V.

Exor holds 21.33% of Ferrari and 32.32% of the votes through loyalty shares. Nobody holds a majority, which makes this the dataset's first working control.

Control Wedge+11.0pp

Holding chainFamily controlled

Heineken N.V.

Heineken family, through L'Arche Green N.V. and Heineken Holding N.V.

The Heineken family controls Heineken N.V. through two stacked companies, holding roughly a quarter of the economics and a majority of the votes.

Voting agreementFamily controlled

Henkel AG & Co. KGaA

Henkel family share-pooling agreement

The Henkel family controls 61.85% of the voting shares through a pooling agreement. No single member controls the company; the contract between them does.

Cross-shareholdingCircular control, no majority

Hyundai Motor Company

Hyundai Mobis Co., Ltd.

Hyundai Mobis holds 22.36% of Hyundai Motor, which holds 35.17% of Kia, which sits above Mobis. No one in the circle holds a majority of anything.

Managing partnerFamily controlled

Merck KGaA

E. Merck KG

The Merck family holds 70.274% of Merck KGaA as general partner. Outside shareholders own the rest and cannot remove them, because nobody votes them in.

Dual-class sharesFoundation controlled

Novo Nordisk A/S

Novo Holdings A/S

A Danish charitable foundation controls Novo Nordisk through a holding company that owns about 28% of the capital and casts about 77% of the votes.

Control Wedge+49.2pp

Holding chainPromoter controlled, just under half

Reliance Industries Limited

Promoter and Promoter Group (Ambani family and associated entities)

Reliance's promoter group fell from 50.006% to 49.999% in a quarter without selling a share. Depository receipt conversions moved the denominator.

TrustFoundation owned, trustee controlled

Robert Bosch GmbH

Robert Bosch Industrietreuhand KG

A charitable foundation owns 93.99% of Bosch and votes none of it. A trust holding 0.01% of the capital casts 93% of the votes. There is no share class.

Control Wedge+93.0pp

Dual-class sharesWorking control, no majority

Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson

Investor AB

Investor AB holds 9.9% of Ericsson and 24.8% of the votes. It chairs the committee of owners that writes the board slate before shareholders ever vote.

Control Wedge+14.9pp

Voting agreementBlocking control, no majority

The Swatch Group Ltd

Hayek Pool

The Hayek Pool votes 44.5% of Swatch — above the third that blocks a supermajority, below the 49% that would force it to bid for the whole company.

Cross-shareholdingNo disclosed controller after unwind

Toyota Motor Corporation

Toyota Group cross-shareholdings

Toyota's only 5% shareholder was the company it grew out of. In 2026 Toyota paid 3.65 trillion yen to buy that 9.17% block back, and is cancelling it.

Golden shareWholly owned, subject to government consent

United States Steel Corporation

Nippon Steel Corporation

Nippon Steel owns every common share of U.S. Steel. The U.S. government owns one share of Class G preferred stock and can block what matters most.

Control Wedge0.0pp

Profiles are added deliberately rather than generated in bulk. A profile is published only when its claims are sourced, which means this list grows at the speed of verification. How we research.