I don't know what sourcebooks would feature the aforementioned 80% figure or Renraku annual income.
Corporate Shadowfiles and
Corporate Download on the other hand, do feature similar information.
Corporate Shadowfiles, page 16
According to the most common definitions, a true megacorporation has a cash flow and degree of world influence roughly equivalent to that of a late 20th century nation-state. Using this definition, twenty five true megacorporations exist today.
>>>>>[This definition makes sense to me. For example, the entire MCT "empire" has an annual cash flow of about 95 billion nuyen, several times the GNP of Ireland. Please note that's cash flow. The figure for total assets is much higher.]<<<<<
-The Chromed Accountant (10:25:15/3-26-54)
>>>>>[Where the frag did you get that figure, Chrome? Thats's way above published data..]<<<<<
-Margo (05:26:21/4-1-54)
>>>>>[The figure above is published data, but also short of the true amount. I imagine that some of my one-time colleagues are also curious as to your source of information.]<<<<<
-Mitsuhama Refugee (19:00:28/4-7-54)
Corporate Download, page 9
Right now, the Big Ten control more resources than all the other corporations in the world put together.
Corporate Download, page 16
The amount of assets the Big Ten claim is almost beyond scale, easily accounting for at least a quarter of the world's wealth (in all likelihood, this figure is much higher, especially if you estimate secrets funds and hidden ownership).
Please note those quotes are respectively referring to cash flow, control of resources by corporations and assets/world wealth.
Cash flow ought to refer to free cash flow, the sum of operational cash flow (add up incomes minus expenses and taxes), investment cash flow (minus assets acquisition) and financing cash flow (add up capital raised, minus dividends and stock buyback).
Cash flow is not very useful to figure out the size of a corporation, its number of employees or its sales. Only a very large corporation may reach a very large cash flow, or an abysmally low-one. But an equally or even larger corporation can have a cash flow close to zero because it balanced revenues and payments. Cash flow may not even represent how successful a corporation is, since it is calculated after dividends were paid. However, since money has to be used somehow, free cash flow is usually a good indication of dividends or stock buybacks for the years to come (which in turn would cause the cash flow to turn negative, as the corporations may pay more dividends than what it earned that year, using leftovers from the previous years, without the corporation being any less successful).
95 billion nuyen, assuming a 2050-2075 nuyen worth about the same as a 1990-2015 US dollar, would be impressive but not
mega-impressive. Apple, Inc. had a cash flow around 50 billions dollar in the past few years, which is widely considered insane (partly due to profits stored in subsidiaries outside the US to avoid taxes, that cannot be used to pay dividends). The top league has cash flow closer to the 15-35 billion range.
To compare corporations and countries, cash flow should be compared to the balance of payments (to compare corporations and
governments, that would be the balance of budget, which is rarely positive). The balance of payments is also difficult to relate to how big an economy is (the US for instance, is the largest economy in the world while having not only a negative balance of payments, but the lowest of any country in the world).
The Big Ten controlling more resources than all the other corporations in the world can mean pretty much anything. Are employees counted as resources? Are they valued accordingly to their skill? Does Lofwyr analytic mind counts as a resource for S-K and how much does it worth? What about the non-measurable influence megacorporations may have over politicians who technically control access to natural resources? There are resources like Matrix grids or military assets whose market value may low because of their cost, but who are strategic resources nonetheless.
As for world wealth, current estimates put it in the hundreds of trillion dollar (I've seen estimates ranging form 100 to 250 trillion). It also a tricky number to use, since debt is deduced from wealth (so technically the poorest person in the world is not going to be a Sudanese refugee with a 0$ wealth: in 2013, it may well have been French ex-trader Jérôme Kerviel who had a debt of 4.9 billion euro to repay to his former employer).
A while ago, I had calculated the top ten banks would nowadays owns assets whose value would be 18% of the world's wealth (through according to a conservative estimate of 120 trillion dollar). However, these banks' assets are mostly debts owed to them, which should actually be excluded from wealth calculation (which also means the Corporate Download estimation should have left out the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinshaft Bank activities as well as all AAA owned banks and insurances). Excluding banking and insurance business, it would take assets from about the 250 largest companies to make up for a quarter of the world's wealth.
