The Journal
Shorter-form writing on company ownership, corporate structures and the business stories worth following.
ByteDance splits TikTok's ownership three ways: roughly 60% global investment funds, 20% Zhang Yiming and other Chinese founders, and 20% employees. Beijing holds 1% of the China unit.
ReadMusk's $44 billion buyout closed in October 2022 and left him with close to three-quarters of the company. Prince Alwaleed kept a $1.9 billion stake and Larry Ellison put in $1 billion.
Page and Brin hold roughly 11% of Alphabet's equity but about 51% of its votes, because their Class B shares carry ten votes each. Vanguard and BlackRock own more stock and less say.
Ted Turner founded CNN in 1980 and sold to Time Warner in 1996. AT&T paid $85 billion for the parent in 2018, and Warner Bros. Discovery took the keys in 2022.
The Glazers bought United in 2005 with borrowed money and pushed the debt onto the club. Nearly 20 years later Jim Ratcliffe's INEOS took 27.7%, leaving the family in control of the vote.
Disney paid about $4 billion in 2009 for Marvel and more than 5,000 characters. Sony still controls Spider-Man on film, and Universal holds Marvel park rights on the US East Coast.
George Lucas was Lucasfilm's sole shareholder until October 2012, when Disney paid $4.05 billion, half cash and half stock, for Star Wars, Indiana Jones and ILM.
The painting belongs to the French Republic rather than to the Louvre. It entered the royal collection under Francois I, and French law now makes it inalienable and unsellable.
Seven countries claim wedges of Antarctica, Australia the largest at about 42%, but the 1959 treaty froze every claim. Today 54 nations run the continent by consensus.
Big Machine sold Swift's first six albums to Scooter Braun in 2019, and Shamrock Capital bought them in 2020. She answered with the re-recordings, then bought the originals back.