HOLDING COMPANY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Holding company

... Corporations.—Consolidations of the kind that require vigorous treatment by the state have their special home in America. They have taken on a number of forms, but are coming more and more into the most efficient form they have ever assumed, that of the corporation. The holding company is the successor of the former trust. The method of union by which stockholders in several corporations surrendered their certificates of stock to a body of trustees and received in return for them what were called trust certificates, ...

— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark