Except for Britain and to some extent the United States, there is little transparency
about the corporate ownership structures of joint-stock companies, because comprehensive, historical corporate ownership data is rare for most countries in this period
(Burhop , pp. –). The available evidence, however, clearly shows that in
most countries except Germany we observe a rapid decline in the concentration of
ownership for the period  to  (Franks et al. ; Foreman-Peck and
Hannah ; Acheson et al. ).