François Lévêque is professor of economics at Mines ParisTech, Université PSL where he teaches the economics of competition and international economics. His research focuses on antitrust policies, the regulation of networks and platforms, as well as intellectual property. He has taught industrial economics at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley.
Billionaires in revenue and multi-billionaires in worth, there are fewer than a thousand Giants and Titans of the economy who are at the head of the race through their technological and financial performance. From luxury products to shipping containers, from zippers to animated films, the global Giants have infiltrated all aspects of our daily lives. As for the digital titans, they gather our data, transfer their profits where they pay little tax, and deepen the inequalities between their well-paid employees and others, between their shareholders and consumer-citizens.

Globalization and technological progress have been the driving forces of this hyperpower. But now governments, weakened, seem to want to take back the upper hand: control social networks, impose new fiscal regulations, strengthen anti-merger rules… A new technological and geopolitical fragmentation is at work in which governments are summoning their multinationals and those of their satellite countries to consolidate their regional power.

Does this movement mark the end of hyperpowerful companies, or at least the end of a continuous expansion that appears limitless?