Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Corporate entities in the United States and other countries have developed remarkably complex structures of ownership, subsidiaries, and board governance—sometimes for tax reasons, sometimes for operational reasons, and sometimes apparently because they’ve grown through accretion.

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Some conglomerates, such as AT&T, Unisys, and ITT, have split themselves into several firms in order to function more profitably. The nation-state will devolve like an unwieldy conglomerate, but probably not before it is forced to do so by financial crises.