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The Koch family (/koʊk/ KOHK) is an American family engaged in business, best known for their political activities (donating to libertarian, criminal justice reform, and Republican Party causes) and their control of Koch Industries, the second-largest privately owned company in the United States (with 2017 revenues of $100 billion). The family business was started by Fred C. Koch, who developed a new cracking method for the refinement of heavy crude oil into gasoline. Fred's four sons litigated against each other over their interests in the business during the 1980s and 1990s.

By 2019, Charles G. Koch and the late David H. Koch, commonly referred to as the Koch brothers, were the only ones of Fred Koch's four sons still with Koch Industries. Charles and David Koch built a political network of libertarian and conservative donors and the brothers funneled financial revenue into television and multi-media advertising.

The political activities of the Koch brothers include the financial and political influence of Charles G. and David H. Koch (1940–2019) on United States politics. This influence is seen both directly and indirectly via various political and public policy organizations that were supported by the Koch brothers.

The Koch brothers are the sons of Fred C. Koch (1900–1967), who founded Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the United States, of which they own 84% of the stock. Having bought out two other brothers' interests, they remain in control of the family business, the fortune which they inherited from their father, and the Koch family foundations.

The brothers have made significant financial contributions to libertarian and conservative think tanks and have donated primarily to Republican Party candidates running for office."[6] A network of like-minded donors organized by the Kochs pledged to spend $889 million from 2009–2016 and its infrastructure has been said by Politico to rival "that of the Republican National Committee."[7] They actively fund and support organizations that contribute significantly to Republican candidates, and in particular that lobby against efforts to expand government's role in health care and climate change mitigation. By 2010, they had donated more than $100 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations.

In May 2019, the Kochs announced a major restructuring of their philanthropic efforts, stating that the Koch network will henceforth operate under the umbrella of Stand Together, a nonprofit focused on supporting community groups. The stated priorities of the restructured Koch network include efforts aimed at increasing employment, addressing poverty and addiction, ensuring excellent education, building a stronger economy, and bridging divides and building respect.

Koch Industries was founded by Fred Koch in 1940 and is majority owned by his sons, better known as the Koch Brothers—David and Charles, with each owning 42% of the company. David, 79 years old, stepped down from his role with the company in 2018 due to health issues, while Charles, 83, remains Chairman and CEO.


Koch Industries is the second-largest privately held company in the U.S., per Forbes annual rankings, generating $110 billion in annual revenues. This has helped position the Koch family as the second richest family in the world, behind only the Walton family (Walmart owners). The Bloomberg Billionaires Index puts the Walton family fortune at $152 billion, while the Koch family is worth $99 billion.


Fred Koch: Father and Founder
At the age of 27, a chemical engineer by the name of Fred Koch developed a new and more efficient process for turning crude oil into gasoline. An MIT graduate, Fred had invented a new method of refining gasoline from viscous and common heavy oil. After a string of lawsuits from Universal Oil Products, which had patented and was licensing a similar technique, Fred brought his innovation to the Soviet Union 1929. He returned to America shortly after to start a family.


A little more than a decade after making his discovery, Koch used the improved process to start an oil refinery business of his own. The company was initially called Wood River Oil and Refining Company, then later became Rock Island Oil and Refining Company before finally being renamed Koch Industries.

Fred Koch was an early and active member of the John Birch Society, a vehement and vocal anti-communist group popular in America after World War II. Charles was also involved with the group until 1968, a year after his father died. The group’s support of the Vietnam War is what finally drove Charles to leave. He left the group with a bang when he and another John Birch member took out a full-page ad in the May 1968 Wichita Eagle with the headline, “Let’s Get Out of Vietnam Now.”

Since then, the company has expanded its operations beyond oil refining into industries such as agriculture and consumer goods manufacturing. Fast forward to today, Koch Industries generates annual sales of $119 billion and is the second-largest privately held company in the U.S. In 1961, the company was worth $21 million. This equates to a 57-year cumulative return of more than 476,000%. To put that into perspective, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index increased roughly 4,210% between Jan. 1, 1961 and Jan. 1, 2019. As of June 2019, Koch Industries had 120,000 employees worldwide.

All of Fred Koch's four sons have become billionaires as a result of the unprecedented growth of the family business. The two brothers are the only members of the family's second generation who still play an active role in the management of the company.

Head Start to Wealth
Following the death of his father Fred in 1967, Charles Koch assumed the role of chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Rock Island Oil. He was 32 years old at the time and had been working in the company for a little more than five years. Before his death, Fred Koch had experienced some heart-related health issues, and as such, had been preparing his son, Charles, for an eventual handover of management, should anything happen to him.

During a New York magazine interview, David Koch briefly spoke about his father’s unfortunate death. He mentioned, “Father was on a hunting trip bird-shooting in Utah. He was in a blind with a gun loader next to him. He was having heart palpitations and wasn’t shooting that well. Finally, a lone bird came over. He took the shot and hit it square. The duck falls from the air. He turns to the loader and says, ‘Boy, that was a magnificent shot,’ and then keels over dead.”

Despite having wealthy parents, the Koch brothers were raised in an environment that taught them the importance of hard work. Charles is famous for saying that his father never wanted his boys “to turn into country-club bums.” As a result, they were required to spend their spare time working while attending school. In the book, Sons of Wichita, Daniel Schulman wrote, “He [Fred] put them [his sons] to work milking cows, bailing hay, digging ditches, mowing lawns, and whatever else he could think of.”

With that being said, it is still true that the Koch brothers were given a head start when they inherited their father’s business. The company was valued at $21 million a few years before his death in 1961. Additionally, the company already owned several stakes in oil refineries throughout the country.

(CNN)The death of David Koch on Friday -- and the broader retreat he and his brother made from politics since the 2016 election -- brings an end (if not the end) to one of the most influential (and controversial) chapters in modern American politics. Like them or hate them -- and almost no one feels indifferently about David and Charles Koch -- it's impossible to overlook the impact they have had on our current political culture.

Prior to the Koch brothers' entrance into the political space, which began in a major and concerted way with the founding of Americans for Prosperity in 2004, most outside groups were the equivalent of pop-up stores. They'd emerge from nowhere during the heat of an election -- usually a presidential one -- spend millions of dollars (from a handful of wealthy donors) and then disappear. From one election to the next, there was very little continuity in these groups and, as importantly, no repository for data collected or lessons learned.

What David and Charles Koch did starting in the mid-2000s was the equivalent of building not just one permanent store but an entire block of them. In this, they were helped -- mightily -- by the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that allowed political actors like them to spend more freely on efforts to directly advocate for their preferred policies and politics.
Rather than throwing their considerable wealth -- they are both billionaires -- at fly-by-night political operations, they built their own from scratch, with an eye not toward short-term gains but to affecting longer-term changes in the culture. So, it wasn't just a single quasi-political organization. There were think tanks to incubate libertarian ideas that the Koch favored. There were various foundations to influence public policy outside of the context of campaigns. It was a one-stop political and policy shop, a sort of shadow Republican Party but crafted in the libertarian molds of the Kochs and entirely controlled by them.
That wasn't the only thing that the Koch brothers did differently. While most outside groups up until Americans for Prosperity's formation had dumped all the money they raised into TV ads, the Koch brothers instead focused far more on building grassroots infrastructures -- focusing, again, on sustainability rather than immediate success. By the 2016 election, Americans for Prosperity had state directors in 34 states, according to the New Yorker's Jane Mayer.
And while most outside groups sought to use their money to influence the presidential race and other high-profile contests, the Kochs often poured their money into far less sexy projects like influencing policy at the state legislative level (through their donations to the American Legislative Exchange Council) and winning majorities in state legislatures around the country (thanks to donations to the Republican State Leadership Committee).

https://qz.com/1694047/what-the-koch-brothers-own/

Koraci koje je Trampova administracija preduzela protiv kineskog telekomunikacionog giganta Huavei 2020. godine, zabranjujući dobavljačima da prodaju kompanijske poluprovodnike koji su im potrebni za proizvodnju mobilnih telefona.
Zabrana je imala razorne posledice po poslovanje Huaveja. Nekada svetski lider u prodaji pametnih telefona, pao je na 10. mesto ukupno od kada je zabrana uvedena.

Evropu čeka najveće preuzimanje ikada?
Italijanska porodica Beneton i američki investicioni fond Blackstone dali su ponudu za preuzimanje kompanije Altantia za 63 milijarde dolara.

Porodica Beneton već ima trećinu akcija firme, a ovim potezom žele da ova kompanija bude potpuno u privatnom vlasništvu i povuče se sa berze. Takođe, ovako se sprečavaju interesi konkurenata u ovom operateru aeodroma i auto-puteva.

Ideja da se nešto povuče sa berze i postane privatno vlasništvo nije prva tokom ove nedelje. Ilon Mask je ove nedelje ponudio 41 milijardu dolara da kupi Twitter. Sa istom namerom. Privatno vlasništvo i povlačenje sa berze.

Ugovor, ako se desi, bi bio druga najveća transakcija na svetu u ovoj godini nakon Microsoft-ove akvizicije Activision Blizzard-a u vrednosti od 69 milijardi dolara, prenose agencije.

Očuvanje integriteta

Alesandro Beneton, predsednik holding firme Edizione, koja poseduje trećinu akcija Atlantije rekao je da je jedan od ciljeva očuvanje integriteta Atlantie i njenog italijanskog identiteta, dodajući da su u Blackstone-u pronašli dugogodišnjeg suinvestitora i partnera.

Kako se navodi u medijskim izveštajima, prodajom će se smanjiti Atlantijin dug od 38,6 milijardi evra, a u njenu će blagajnu doneti 8 milijardi evra.

Benetton i Blackstone izjavili su u četvrtak da će ponuditi 23 evra po deonici, premiju od 24,4 odsto na cenu deonice.

Premija raste kada se uzme u obzir da će ulagači koji ponude svoje deonice i dalje dobiti predloženu dividendu od 0,74 evra po deonici.

Milijarder i osnivač kompanije „Tesla“ Ilon Mask želi da kupi 91 odsto akcija Tvitera i spreman je da plati više od 41 milijarde dolara. Međutim, kako je sam rekao u petak, nije siguran da li će njegova ponuda biti prihvaćena. Saudijski princ Alvalid bin Talal (67), glavni akcionar u ovom tehnološkom gigantu, čovek je koji će doneti odluku o tome.

Član kraljevske porodice Saudijske Arabije odbio je prvobitnu Maskovu ponudu u iznosu od 41,4 milijarde dolara, odnosno 54,20 dolara po akciji.

Ipak, saudijski princ nagovestio je da je bi „bio otvoren za ideju da Mask preuzme kontrolu na Tviterom, ako može da prikupi više sredstava“.

"Ne verujem da je predložena suma od 54,20 dolara po akciji blizu suštinske vrednosti Tvitera, obzirom na njegove izglede za rast. Budući da smo jedni od najvećih i dugoročnih akcionara Tvitera, ‚Kingdom KHC‘ (kompanija preko koje princ obavlja poslove prim. aut.) i ja odbijamo ovu punudu", napisao je bin Talal na Tviteru.

Maskov odgovor

Milijarder, koji tvrdi da ima „plan B“ ako njegova početna ponuda ne bude prihvaćena, odmah je odgovorio na prinčev tvit.

"Zanimljivo. Ako mogu da postavim dva pitanja. Koliki deo u Tviteru 'Kingdom' poseduje, direktno i indirektno? Kakvi su stavovi o slobodi govora novinara?", naveo je Mask.

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Naftna kompanija Saudi Aramko je sa tržišnom vrednošću od 2,3 biliona američkih dolara najskuplja kompanija na svetu, a sledi američki Epl. Malo se promenilo u dominaciji firmi sa sedištem u SAD na svetskim berzama. Sada ih je 60, a pre pre šest meseci ih je bilo 61.

Među prvih 10 su Majkrosoft, Alfabet (matična kompanija Gugla), Amazon, Tesla, investiciona kompanija Berkšir Hatavej, zdravstveno osiguranje Junatedhelt, Džonson & Džonson i Fejsbuk grupa Meta.

Najvrednija evropska kompanija je švajcarski Nestle - na 20. mestu. Prema revizorima, krajem 2007, dakle pre finansijske krize, među 100 najvrednijih kompanija širom sveta 46 su bile iz Evrope. Sada ih je ostalo samo 16.

Pad cena na svetskim berzama, izazvan ruskim ratom protiv Ukrajine, zabrinutošću u pogledu recesije i rastućim kamatnim stopama, zbrisao je bilione dolara vrednosti u prvoj polovini 2022.

Samo tržišna kapitalizacija, odnosno vrednost akcija kojima se trguje na berzi 100 najskupljih kompanija pala je tokom prvih šest meseci ove godine za 17 odsto ili 6,1 bilion dolara, na oko 29,8 biliona dolara. Pritom su tehnološke firme pale čak za 28 odsto.

Nasuprot tom trendu, naftne i gasne kompanije među prvih 100 povećale su svoju berzansku vrednost za 19 odsto.