Talk:State-owned enterprise

Question about USA in the Summary box

Not sure whether it was some over-zealous free marketeer but in the summary box it claims the US government is not owned in any businesses at all whereas in the rest of the article it states many corporations (particularly financial and industrial) that the US government (albeit in some cases only recently) have taken over.

Do more boxes (such as industry and finance) need to be added, existing ones need to be altered or is omeone trying to protect the USA's perfect score? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.176.71.187 (talk) 19:09, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Also should healthcare be changed now, and what's up with listing USPS and then saying it doesn't have a mixed postal service? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.28.121 (talk) 10:32, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Some editors are relying on a court ruling that the USPS is not a corporation. But the summary table actually creates the false impression that the USPS is owned by someone other than the government. The simple truth is that postal services in the US are a federal government service regardless of the legal niceties of what type of entity it is. I can't find a single country where postal services are not a government function, so maybe postal services should simply be removed entirely. Roger (talk) 11:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

In theory, the EU requires that the government should allow private competition in postal services. This doesn't mean that such all-services-offered corporations would crop up immediately, but some companies have already made minor progress in some specialized postal services (such as delivering newspapers in major cities). --vuo (talk) 15:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

What should be changed to the US's healthcare box? Change it to mixed? And what the Hell is up with Canada not having mixed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.178.182.27 (talk) 21:46, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Article is wrong?

umm, actually I think this article is wrong. The term "public corporation" is used to mean publically traded company in almost all articles Ive ever read (when they article writer needs to dinstinguish that corperation from a privately owned one)

yes--this is confusing--I've not heard this used this way, at least not for U.S. companies. And to make matters worse, I got here from a link that indicated it was about municipal corporations like townships anc cities. older≠wiser 01:18, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

It's even worse than that--this article says A public corporation "stands distinct from a publicly traded company (sometimes known as a public company). However, that article says "Literally a public company is a company owned by the public." Something is very confused here (and I don't think it is only me). older≠wiser

This is really confusing. It's not a "public company", it's a "government company". - Jerryseinfeld 23:40, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The correct words to use are "state-owned company" or "government-owned", and they can be public (with some free float shares) or closet/limited. Regards, anonymous user. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.113.208.89 (talk) 18:17, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm moving

This is about government owned businesses and it's moving. - Jerryseinfeld 23:48, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Merger

I am opposed to the merger of Public ownership and Government-owned corporation. A Government-owned corporation is only one of many types of public ownership. Biscuittin 20:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Since no discussion since May, I'm removing the flag.--Gregalton 02:57, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The terminology in the article appears to be Australian terminology and inapplicable to the larger English speaking world. State-run is preferable in at least the US. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.168.200.170 (talk) 06:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

This merger is obviously tendentious, rather than being done in the name of more and better information. The It should be undone. The GSE section is a total mess. When a reader looks up "GSE", searching for information about how the secondary mortgage market was created, that reader should not be redirected to a page like this. I will either take it on myself to change the redirect or dispute that part of the merger formally. --Dlawbailey (talk) 19:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I will be transferring in content from Public benefit corporation

Some New York-based editor apparently didn't realize that "public benefit corporation" in the sense of a government-owned corporation is apparently used that way only in New York and now we have a huge mess in public benefit corporation because most U.S. states use that term for a nonprofit or not-for-profit corporation. Therefore I will be turning public benefit corporation soon into a disambiguation page and moving a lot of content here in a few weeks. Any objections? See also Talk:Public benefit corporation for more info. --Coolcaesar (talk) 07:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

No one has objected. Doing it now. --Coolcaesar (talk) 09:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually never did get around to it (got distracted after posting that last edit above). But this article really needs to be fixed!--Coolcaesar (talk) 05:58, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Renaming subsection

I'm renaming Government-owned_corporation#Western_Europe to "Europe" since even the examples given aren't limited to that region and ambiguity of west/central/east defnintionVoidLurker (talk) 21:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Examples Part for US - US Postal Service

The article uses the US Postal Service as an example of a Government-owned corporation. However, the article for the US Postal Service shows with a source that the US Postal Service is sometimes confused with a Government-Owned corporation but really isn't. My inclination is to remove this example. Any thoughts? Westeast (talk) 05:17, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

It should not be mentioned in this article. As I noted in the USPS article, the U.S. Supreme Court ALREADY decided in 2004 that the USPS is not a government-owned corporation. This was an easy issue for the court; the decision was unanimous with no concurrences or dissents. I just traced the error back to one of the earliest edits to this article back in 2003 by User:Alex756, who is, um, not too smart about legal matters (as you can see from his user page, he didn't quite understand the GFDL when he signed up for Wikipedia).

This article is a sad example of Wikipedia's huge number of orphan articles---the very small number of experts in this field (on the law of government-owned corporations) have no interest in editing it because they have no interest, or time, to deal with the huge number of vandals, children, and idiots who edit Wikipedia. And I have no interest in it either because I don't litigate for or against government-owned corporations. So it just gets worse and worse and worse. --Coolcaesar (talk) 18:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Major errors with this article

In the definition of this article it states a government-owned corporation is "a legal entity created by a government to undertake commercial or business activities on behalf of an owner government."

In the examples for the US multiple organizations are called government-owned corporations which were not created by the US government, not which operate to understate commercial or business activities on behalf of an owner government.

All Examples given for US organizations WRONG to the best of my knowledge, from this definition.

Example: American Red Cross is not owned by the United States. AARP is not owned by the US Government. Boy Scouts/ Girl Scouts are not owned by the United States Government.

This needs serious rewrite... Alsolarrison (talk) 00:45, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Another error: DHL isn't state-owned. There is a german state-owned bank with some shares, but only 30% so it don't control the company. Regards, someone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.113.208.89 (talk) 18:20, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

DHL is owned by Deutsche Post AG, which in turn used to be owned by the German government entirely. In former times, DPAG was even known as the "German Federal Post" and had the status of a government agency. But you're right, I wouldn't consider DPAG state-owned any more. -- 62.156.52.118 (talk) 01:48, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

DHL is owned by Deutsche Post AG, which in turn used to be owned by the German government entirely. In former times, DPAG was even known as the "German Federal Post" and had the status of a government agency. But you're right, I wouldn't consider DPAG state-owned any more. -- 62.156.52.118 (talk) 01:51, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I thought this over again and I'm not sure. -- 62.156.52.118 (talk) 02:02, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Where shall we draw the line between government-owned and private companies?

Many countries (especially in Europe, due to pressure from Bruxxels) have turned their postal, railway and phone administrations into regular companies. Sometimes these companies stayed state property (don't have an example), sometimes they were sold entirely (e.g. TNT). Some were sold in part while the other part remains with the government (e.g. DBAG, DTAG, DPAG). Now where shall we draw the line between a state-owned and a private company? Should a company be considerd state-owned if 1% is owned by the government? I think that we should draw the line at 50%. That is, if more than 50% of a company are owned by the government, then it is state-owned. If the government has less than 50% we should consider it a private company. Objections welcome. -- 62.156.52.118 (talk) 02:02, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Follow up..

As an example...

Boy Scouts/ Girl Scouts in the United States is not government owned. The organization has a Congressional Charter, granted in 1916.

However this charter is fundamentally a symbolic honorific giving the organization the aura of being "officially" sanctioned by the U.S. government. [From the wikipedia entry on Government Charter] "However Congress does not oversee or supervise organizations with the charter (other than receiving a yearly financial statement). In order to clarify that the chartered organizations are not government entities and not supervised by the government both the House and the Senate in 1990s agreed not to issue additional charters.

Note, no government ownership exists, so listing this organization under "Government Owned Organizations" under "Government Corporation" is definitely incorrect. Doing a quick review of the other entries in this section, indicates they are also all incorrect.

Alsolarrison (talk) 00:52, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

• This is obvious vandalism inserted by User:98.219.53.237. I've reverted it. ElizabethFong (talk) 07:39, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Only a few papers about this topic....

• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=government+owned+corporation&num=10&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=title&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_sdt=1.&as_sdtp=on&as_sdts=5&hl=en

--222.67.205.32 (talk) 07:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

This term seems to be better

• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=allintitle%3A+state+owned+corporation&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0

--222.67.205.32 (talk) 07:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=allintitle%3A+crown+corporation&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0

--222.67.205.32 (talk) 07:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

This term returns to heaps

• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=state+owned+enterprise&num=10&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=title&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_sdt=1.&as_sdtp=on&as_sdts=5&hl=en

--222.67.205.32 (talk) 07:52, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Not so good for this term

• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=government+business+enterprise&num=10&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=title&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_sdt=1.&as_sdtp=on&as_sdts=5&hl=en

--222.67.205.32 (talk) 07:53, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

No, that's because Google Scholar only has access to a small number of the academic papers out there. There are a lot more papers available in the gigantic (and very expensive) private databases like ProQuest and LexisNexis. You need to visit an academic library to gain access to those. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Government owned gambling in UK

It states on the page that the UK government doesn't have ownership of any gambling companies - but that's not correct, the UK government owns The Tote bookmakers. Although there's been plans to privatise the company, as things currently stand the government's decided that is will not be pursuing the sale of the tote in the medium term[1].

Any objections to me updating the table? --Richardeast (talk) 16:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

TARP, etc.

It seems that the section of US companies partially nationalized under TARP and other bailout actions of the recent recession needs to be constantly updated to reflect privatizations. It also doesn't seem to differentiate between things that were almost completely nationalized (like 92.5% in the case of AIG) and ones where the stake was never more that minority (i.e., Goldman Sachs).

Other comments that don't seem to fall right into a category. Is Florida Virtual School a federal government corporation like TVA? Somehow this seems doubtful and at best a very poor choice to head the list.

The comments about the huge extent of the sovereignty of U.S. states strikes me as exaggerated and almost Neo-Confederate, more an expression of an ideological position than a statement of verifiable, 21st century reality. It at least seems to skirt WP:NPOV. Does anyone else see this.

TARP

Can someone please explain this better? If Bank of America has repaid their loan, then how are they still government-owned? StarDust787 (talk) 10:21, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Renaming of GOC-by-country categories

Please note that the subcategories of Category:Government-owned companies by country have been nominated for renaming from "Government-owned companies in X" to "Government-owned companies of X". See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 December 26#Category:Government-owned companies in Foo for the discussion. - htonl (talk) 17:29, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Germany

The row for Germany in the Summary section is full with mistakes:

• Gambling is subject to regulation on the state level, although all 16 states used to have the same gambling laws. These laws stated that gambling requires a license, and such licenses were only issued to government-owned companies. Recently, Bruxxels however forced Germany to open this market. As a result, one state (Schleswig-Holstein) left the existing state agreement and relaxed gambling regulations significantly while the remaining 15 states only decided on a slight change that would allow a limited number of private participants. So we can call this an open market, especially as the old regulations are no longer enforced due to pressure from Brussels.
• Railway is an open market where DBAG only owns most of the infrastructure and holds most of the market power. However, there are also smaller competitors. One of them is Netinera, a subsidy of Trenitalia (aka Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane). The Federal Network Agency is supposed to make sure that these competitors can use DBAG's infrastructure on a non-discriminatory basis. However, there are also private railway companies which have infrastructure of their own. DBAG is legally a public limited company which is in part owned by the government. DBAG has extended its operations to other countries as well, including Switzerland and Austria. We are not talking about cross-border service here but about trains that serve domestic relations! Through the aquisition of Arriva, DBAG even managed to expand to the UK and other countries. However, they don't have any train that would be allowed to use the channel tunnel between the UK and France. When DBAG aquired Arriva, the German part of Arriva was renamed "Netinera" and given to Trenitalia (aka Ferrovie dello State Italiane). This means that you can now travel between some cities in the UK with Deutsche Bahn while you can take a Trenitalia-operated train from Regensburg to Nürnberg. I don't see how this could be considered a monopoly.
• The situation of postal service is similar. Although DPAG has the biggest market share, you can choose between several post companies. DPAG is the only post company which provides Federation-wide service. The private post companies only cover small parts of the country (sometimes this is a whole state, but sometimes just a single city). For some, this means that they can only provide local or regional service while most private post work together to provide Federation-wide service. For instance, if you send a letter from Berlin to Regensburg with PIN-Mail, it would be delievered by CityPost Regensburg. And if you send a letter from Regensburg to Nuremberg with CityPost, it will be delievered by NordbayernPost. Many of them also offer international service, however, in most cases this means that items have to go through a government-owned post company in a third country (that is, as an ABC remailing) as many monopolists don't want to support private post companies in other countries. However, there are also cases where foreign public post companies happily cooperate with german private post companies. One example of this is TNT which belongs to the Dutch government and faces competition from SelektMail, the Dutch subsidy of Deutsche Post AG. So, to cut a long story short, before you buy stamps in Germany, you need to choose a post company of your choice. DPAG has the biggest network of post boxes, but the private ones are often a few cents cheaper. And then, you need to make sure that you put your mail into the RIGHT post box. THIS IS NOT A MONOPOLY EITHER!

-- 62.156.41.199 (talk) 00:00, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

If the state-owned gambling, railway or postal corporations still continue to operate, exclusively in some states, then this is a mix, not a privately-operated free market. --vuo (talk) 14:13, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Paragraph on corruption

I removed the following:

An increasing number of corporations are taking additional steps to protect their reputation and reducing exposure by identifying government-owned companies in an effort to identify easily overlooked government officials. Dow Jones has allegedly identified over 100,000 government-owned or controlled corporations in its Anti-Corruption service. This number far exceeds earlier estimates by the OECD, and is therefore heavily disputed as experts in the field estimate that fewer than 100,000 of such entities are known publicly.

What is this talking about? I can't even parse this: "identify easily overlooked government officials". Can this be explained? --vuo (talk) 14:03, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

No criticism section?

Surely this article deserves a criticism section. I'm completely new to the subject but seems clear to me that these must cause problems for free market economies. 78.86.61.94 (talk) 05:54, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

No Merger

Government owned corporation and State owned should not be merged. Not all state owned entities are corporations and vise versa. A nation-state can own a lot of things that are not intended to create revenue. Government owned corporations or sometimes Crown corporations can have a vast difference from a goverment owning land for a park or a country owning a state run broadcast outlet. I think the Governmnet-owned page should be used for companies - revenue generating companies that do not serve a specific public entitlement like parks, roads, electric service. Especially since State-owned is not a common capitalist term. 173.123.200.144 (talk) 00:04, 25 April 2012 (UTC)