Industrial foundations are foundations that own companies or run businesses. A foundation is a separate legal person who does not have owners or members. It is managed by a board and possibly a chief executive under a charter written by the founder. Foundations have a non-profit purpose, which may either consist in running a business and/or a charity (typically both). Charitable private foundations are found in almost all countries and play a significant role in the U.S. and Britain. Industrial foundations is known from Holland, Germany and the Nordic countries, but are particularly important in Denmark, where the foundation-owned companies employ more than 300,000 employees (Hansmann and Thomsen, 2010) compared with a domestic private employment at approx 1,500,000. They play a particularly important role among the very largest firms, for example they account for 60% of the main Danish stock index C20.
Project Support
The project is supported by the Copenhagen Business School with support from the LEO Foundation (1 mill. kr), the Ramboll Foundation (1 mill. Kr), the Novo Nordisk Foundation (2 mill. Million), the Lundbeck Foundation (1 mill. Kr), the Lauritzen Foundation (0.8 mill. kr), the COWI Foundation (0.3 mill. kr), the Augustinus Foundation (1 mill. kr), the Carlsberg Foundation (0.8 mill. kr) and Knud Højgaard’s Foundation (0 , 5 mill. kr).
The researchers associated with the project are free to research and publish as they want. The sponsors have no influence on research design, research or publication thereof. Research results etc. will be published on this home page and made available to the public.
Danish