Holding System, the securing of control by one company over several other companies through the acquisition of controlling blocks of shares. The head company— parent—acquires a controlling block of shares in another company—the subsidiary, which, in its turn, controls subsubsidiary companies, and so on down the line. Consistently following this system, the parent organisation eventually establishes control over an expanding pyramid of companies and wields a capital many times the size of its own fortune. Usually it is the financial corporations—banks and insurance monopolies, which hold capital in the money form—that become the parent companies at the summit of these pyramids. The holding system is especially typical of modern monopoly capital. By exploiting it, the financial oligarchy is able to successfully expand its dominance over a tremendous number of industrial and banking enterprises.