Schwarz group, the 4th largest retailer on the planet Earth, received public funding for their expansion in eastern Europe. I'm receving Lidl/Kaufland weekly paper leaflets at my doorstep anywhere I live in Germany or Poland, to be ecologically guilt tripped by various marketing materials on visiting their venues. Innocent family business, I said.

I did not know their absolutely massive expansion eastward was fueled with public money.

They're not true monopolies but it's close enough in many respects

Illuminating. Thanks. Modern day slavery it is

Thanks for the information. I am curious, what is your comment on BMW?

And yet the German auto market is a particularly rigid oligopoly regardless, dominated by their domestic auto giants.

BMW, Daimler, VW all stuffed into one $4.3t economy. It'd be like if GM and Ford were ten times larger than they are in relation to the size of the US economy.

Scaled up to the US economy in size, those three would be up around $3 trillion in sales (five to six times the size of Walmart).

So they're co-monopolies, towering over the German economy, sharing it all with one or two other giant German companies. I suppose that's nice of them, sharing is caring.

The car companies are publicly traded. OP was talking about giant family owned corporations. You should watch out for Schwarz especially. Walmart tried to enter the German market and failed. Lidl/Aldi are expanding everywhere. I would say they are the only example where the German efficiency stereotype is actually true.

> The car companies are publicly traded

well kinda. bmw basically is owned to 46% by two people and they control it. vw the same, most voting stock is in the hands Porsche Automobil Holding SE, basically owned by wolfang porsche, his ancestor was ferdinand porsche.

yeah on paper they are traded. but not controlled. (mercedes is different here) but a lot corporations in germany are at least still controlled by descendants

since when do you need a "monopolistic position" to be a good investment?