Company Profiles

Disastrous investments in mortgage-backed securities and the American housing-market debacle brought the nation’s fourth-largest investment bank to bankruptcy in 2008. Learn how it happened.

Based on direct sales and service, not franchised dealerships, Tesla has paid particular attention to expanding its network of charging stations, the key to growing the electric vehicle business. And it’s expanding into home energy-storage services.

The typical American investment-banking hierarchy is investment analyst, associate, vice president, senior vice president, and managing director.

Establishing Alphabet as a parent company, allowed Google to expand outside of internet search and advertising to acquire companies in areas including robotics, life sciences, healthcare, and anti-aging—as well as better protect itself against antitrust violations and account for different income streams.

The three most famous early monopolies were Andrew Carnegie’s Steel Company (now U.S. Steel), John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, and the American Tobacco Company. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) was forced to break up in 1982. The diamond merchant De Beers group is a more recent near-monopoly.

Coca-Cola has been the market leader since 2004. Pepsi is number two, followed by Dr. Pepper-Snapple.