IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/hbs/journl/2010q3cheffins.pdf.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Corporate Pyramid Fable

Author

Listed:
  • Steven A. Bank and Brian R. Cheffins

    (UCLA School of Law; Cambridge University)

Abstract

Although corporate pyramids are currently commonplace world-wide and although there have been "noteworthy pyramiders" in American business history, this controversial form of corporate organization is now a rarity in the United States. The conventional wisdom is that corporate pyramids disappeared in the U.S. when New Deal policymakers began taxing dividends paid to corporate shareholders. This version of events is more fable than truth. The introduction of the intercorporate dividend tax did not foster a rapid dismantling of corporate pyramids. Instead, pyramidal arrangements were already rare in the U.S., other than in the utilities sector, and the demise of utility pyramids was prompted by the Public Utilities Holding Company Act of 1935 rather than tax reform.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven A. Bank and Brian R. Cheffins, 2010. "The Corporate Pyramid Fable," Business History Review, Harvard Business School, vol. 84(3), pages 435-458, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:hbs:journl:2010q3cheffins.pdf
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/bhr/2010Q3cheffins.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hbs:journl:2010q3cheffins.pdf. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Felice Whittum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/harbsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.