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The oldest company in almost every country (that is still in business)

businessfinancing.co.uk

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Re: The oldest company in almost every country (that is still in business)

#131

Post by squiggleblaz »

jandrese wrote: post #16
adamsea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an extreme level of institutional instability. My first guess would be colonialism and its consequences.

Also, the pre-colonial population maybe didn't have a culture of setting up long running businesses? Sure there would be family businesses, but they're be informal affairs. Also, in some cases there was no system of writing so no reliable records for determining the age of a business.

> Sure there would be family businesses, but they're be informal affairs.

But a lot of the other examples were informal business at some point, or activities conducted by governments with no formal independent existence till centuries later. It's just a double standard. Facts were not important to the creators of this graph.

Re: The oldest company in almost every country (that is still in business)

#132

Post by squiggleblaz »

Shank wrote: post #70
Slikey wrote: post #29

The oldest company in the world on this chart (Kongo Gumi in Japan) is not in Business anymore. It seized operations in 2006 due to bankruptcy.

According to wikipedia, it was bought by Takamatsu and operates as a wholly owned subsidiary, though admittedly I don't think that counts anymore for this title: https://www.kongogumi.co.jp/ .

According to the standard established in other cases, that would probably make Takamatsu the oldest company.

Re: The oldest company in almost every country (that is still in business)

#133

Post by squiggleblaz »

psalminen wrote: post #37
TheNewAndy wrote: post #23

I was expecting to see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avedis_Zildjian_Company for USA. I suspect there is always some wiggle room in the definitions of "oldest", but wikipedia dates it as earlier than Shirley Plantation (and it is also older than the company given for Armenia).

It wasn't started in America though.

Because I'm meant to believe HSBC was started in El Salvador right? The standard in the image does not include having started there.

Re: The oldest company in almost every country (that is still in business)

#134

Post by squiggleblaz »

ptr wrote: post #125
tricolon wrote: post #118

If you didn't care about the "still in business" part—implying the same line of business—Stora Enso of Finland would date back to 1288: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stora_Enso

Stora Enso is actually a merger of two companies; Swedish Stora and Finnish Enso. It’s Stora that was founded in 1288 with the copper mine in Falun ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Mine ), which produced 2/3 of Europe’s copper needs at one point in time. It was also the world’s first stock company apparently, and it’s still in business.

(Being a merger does not exclude a company according to the standards of the map. For instance, Australia Post was at one stage a government department, formed by merging departments from several other governments. It's only by using this extremely contrived definition of "oldest company still in business" that they can reach 1809.)

Re: The oldest company in almost every country (that is still in business)

#135

Post by andreitp1 »

ineedasername wrote: post #52

If they're going to include religious companies like the Affligem Brewery, created by Monks, then religious organizations as a whole are fair game. And the Catholic Church, or some form of Orthodox Church, precedes pretty much everything else. I'd argue that a religion itself doesn't qualify though, it has to be a religious organization that had some level of central control, distinct from the government of nation-st…

I guess it depends on the primary purpose of the entity. It doesn't matter if Affligem (or any other business) was created by monks, atheists or space aliens. It's still a brewery. Of course, you could argue that all religious organizations are businesses, but for all intents and purposes we do not include them in these kinds of analyses, lest everything becomes a business and the analyses become meaningless.

Re: The oldest company in almost every country (that is still in business)

#137

Post by marliechiller »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #128
Yessing wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for example Café M’Rabet – Tunis was created in 1630 and it is still operational till now. But it was not registered as a company at the time.

But do you seriously reckon all those European businesses from the 800s were registered as a company? This map is nothing but a racist pissing match created by enlightened Europeans who've worked out some novel way of considering them better than the civilisations they trashed. It's an embarrassment.

is it that? or is it just a mildly interesting, if factually incorrect infographic? youve made a mental leap to racism there which is quite unfair

Re: The oldest company in almost every country (that is still in business)

#139

Post by squiggleblaz »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #51

Not sure what I expected but I was somewhat underwhelmed to see the oldest in Australia is Australia Post.

Only by the most contrived and tortured definition. The company only really dates to 1989, 1975 at the outside. Before that, it was a government department. If you can count a government department just because it later became a company, what kind of definition is that?

Re: The oldest company in almost every country (that is still in business)

#140

Post by badosu »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #115
alpha_squared wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any material you can recommend I can read more on that? As I understand it, the writings of Irenaeus get cited here to make that point except they're often taken out of context.

Rome was the center of the Mediterranean world during the early church, the only city with a million people. That's the only reason the Roman diocese became dominant. Not any sort of lineage or pedigree.

Actually, the patriarch at constantinople had the dominant authority at the early christendom.

There's a very informative youtube video about the schism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6rWf0k8d78

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