ABSTRACT
The electric industry became an international business since the first commercial ventures started to use it for lighting and power. Back then, the industry resorted to any business model available to investing abroad: free-standing companies, multinational investment by manufacturing firms of electricity equipment, investment trusts, or consortia of investors. The managerial economics of the industry justified this array of experiments. The utility holding culminated this process of experimentation, representing the face of the multinational firm in the electric power industry in the early twentieth century. It addressed the intrinsic stand-alone characteristic of electric utilities and, simultaneously, devised a business form to blend financing with engineering knowledge and hands-on management capabilities. From the 1930s foreign capital and multinationals ceased to define the industry. The preponderance of utility holdings decreased, victims of the Great Depression and the role of the state as the main protagonist in the integration of national networks.
