Wealthy individuals or families control many companies around the world. As a result, these individuals (or families) tend to establish control over a large number of corporations within a given economy — which constitute business groups.

The aim of this research is to provide an additional analysis of business groups in contemporary Israel and to examine more closely their characteristics that previous literature has not addressed. Business groups have always been a dominant form of economic organization in Israel, and they purportedly played a critical role in Israeli economic development. In particular, previous work has shown that 20 business groups account for nearly 50 percent of the market capitalization of the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange (Kosenko 2008).