The history of the Dutch multinational trading companies in the twentieth century is still a rather unexplored field, as most attention has been focused on the seventeenth-century merchants. It would be interesting to know at the start of this research how many trading companies existed during the twentieth century and how important they were in terms of assets, employees and turnover. When trying to answer these questions, the first problem that arises is one of definition. Which companies are covered by the English term ‘trading companies’? Casson’s definition: ‘a firm that specialises in market-making intermediation may be defined as a trading firm’ is of some help, but covers thousands of firms of very diverse nature and sizes varying from two-man retail traders to multinational companies with large numbers of staff. (Casson, Chapter 2, this volume). We can only start comparing like with like if we narrow down the number of companies to those engaged in roughly similar business activities. In this chapter I want to concentrate on multinational companies in the twentieth century, with the exclusion of those trading in one commodity only. This still leaves a group of fifty to one hundred companies and private firms, judging very roughly from the stock exchange handbooks (Van Oss’ Effectenboek 1904-72).