Investment Companies, specialised credit and finance companies that accumulate the cash savings of small investors which are then used as an extraneous source of financing share-holding companies. The people’s cash resources are mobilised through sales of shares of the investment companies themselves. The main sphere where the obtained resources are utilised are the shares and bonds of trade and industrial, transport and municipal corporations and also of big banks and holding companies. Thus investment companies perform the functions of an intermediate link between individual money capital and the monopoly corporations. In the USA, these institutions are called investment companies, in Great Britain— investment trusts, and in France and the Federal Republic of Germany—- investment or capital investment companies. The first individual investment companies (trusts) came into being in the Netherlands and Switzerland in the first half of the 19th century; they began to develop rapidly owing to the growth of the share- holding form of enterprises in Great Britain in the 1860s. American investment companies made their appearance in the 1920s, when they rapidly grew amidst the speculation boom on the stock market and occupied an important position on the loan capital market. The Great Depression of 1929-1933 resulted in the bankruptcy of many investment companies; many small investors lost the savings they had put into shares, which were then bought by speculators and the top crust of the most influential financial groups at low prices. Since the war the investment companies have stepped up their activity in all the capitalist countries as a result of the corporations’ need of financial resources. Having accumulated the overwhelming portion of mobilised resources in corporation shares, investment companies have become an important source of long-term capital on the money market. They help increase the power of the financial oligarchy and intensify the social and property inequalities in capitalist society.