Government Ownership in Vekllei

Part of the bulletin series of articles

Summary

• Government-owned corporations (GOCs) are owned by the Vekllei government, which in practice often means each of the republics simultaneously.
• The share capital of GOCs is governed by preferred-privileged shares, which are available only to government ministries, departments and occasionally industry councils.
• Rather than consisting of thousands or millions of shares, GOCs have their share capital pegged to the number of relevant authorities (in most cases republic governments).
• As such, nationalised corporations like Commonwealth Airways have issued only 9 shares, each being owned by a republic’s Ministry of Transport.

The unusual ownership structure of Commonwealth GOCs¹ are a result of the federalised Vekllei system. While the commonwealth councils do own some corporations directly, the vast majority of Vekllei state-owned assets fall under the portfolio of the ministries of constituent republics.²

Each republic has the same suite of ministries responsible for its own affairs. Because ministries in Vekllei are decentralised (but identical),³ they own corporations that would be nationalised overseas jointly, as a means of representing one collective owner. This stake can be attributed a money-value but there is no legal mechanism for any one republic to exploit or leverage that value.

There are generally three levels of government-owned corporation in Vekllei:

• Federalised corporations, owned by the Commonwealth government
• Nationalised corporations, owned jointly or singularly constituent republics
• Municipalised corporations, owned by a Polis, territory or municipality

Issued preferred-privilege shares in the case of jointly-owned GOCs do confer limited voting rights. Jointly-owned GOCs have a governing council that helps unify the policy of the individual ministries. In most cases, these GOCs operate as independent businesses within the mandate of their governing portfolio, but ministries can call votes on policy in certain cases. In this sense, the ministerial councils operate similarly to a board of directors.