Breaking Up the Giants of Harm. To protect democracy and have a resilient economy, we must tackle corporate power. Again. “Governments and economic regulators have, since the 1980s, turned a blind eye to a handful of giant companies steadily gaining chokeholds in global markets. Banking, agriculture, digital technology, publishing, music, pharmaceuticals and more are dominated by firms that have grown too big, and too powerful. Their rising power harms consumers, workers, small businesses – and democracy. This report argues that the main regulatory tools that are supposed to protect us against the dangers of extreme corporate power – antitrust or competition policy – have been substantially ‘captured’ by monopoly interests. As a result, forcing the break up of dominant firms has fallen out of favour. This report calls on political leaders and regulators to take the harms of big firms on democracy and society seriously, and revive dormant recourse of forced breakups. It shows why we must break up dominant firms, when to break them up (and when not to), and how to do it. There is new hope: breakups are quite possible, and regulators are at last waking up to this option – though not fast enough. Report by Nicholas Shaxson and Claire Godfrey for the Balanced Economy Project. With particular thanks to Laurel Kilgour. Additional thanks to: Ian Brown, Maria Luisa Stasi, Max von Thun, Michelle Meagher, Tommaso Valletti. All errors and omissions are ours.”