Part I: Introduction: Background, Theory, and Controversies
1. The Free-Standing Company Revisited, Mira Wilkins
2. Transaction-Cost Theory and the Free-Standing Firm, Jean-François Hennart
3. An Economic Theory of the Free-Standing Company, Mark Casson
4. The Free-Standing Company, in Theory and Practice, T. A. B. Corley
Part II: Countries and Regions that were Host to Free-Standing Companies
5. Free-Standing Companies in Italy, 1883-1912, Peter Hertner
6. British Free-Standing Companies in Tsarist Russia, Natalia Gurushina
7. British Free-Standing Companies and Investment Groups in India and the Far East, Stanley Chapman
8. British Free-Standing Companies on the West Coast of South America, Rory Miller
9. British Free-Standing Companies in Mexico, 1884-1911, Reinhard Liehr and Mariano E. Torres Bautista
10. A French Free-Standing Company in Brazil's Sugar Industry: A Case Study of the Société de Sucreries Bresiliennes, 1907-1922, Tomás Szmrecsányi
Part III: Countries that were Homes to Free-Standing Companies: General and by Sector
11. Dutch Free-Standing Companies, 1870-1940, Ben P. A. Gales and Keetie E. Sluyterman
12. Continental European Free-Standing Companies: The Case of Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland, Harm Schröter
13. British Overseas Banks as Free-Standing Companies, 1830-1996, Geoffrey Owens
14. US Foreign Direct Investment in Electric Utilities in the 1920s, William J. Hausman and John L. Neufeld
15. The Montreal Engineering Company and International Power: Overcoming the Limitation of the Free-Standing Utility, Gregory P. Marchildon
Part IV: Conclusion
16. The Significance of the Concept and a Future Agenda, Mira Wilkins