>I think you are used to Western Companies where the default is private ownership.
From a continental European perspective I'd contest that. Quite a few of today's multinationals here began as either wholly or partly state owned and/or today have still significant state ownership - especially in infrastructure/utility/telecommunications, but also in "strategic" industries. This includes telcos like Deutsche Telekom (with its daughter T-Mobile), former state mail companies like DHL, Airbus (and its numerous predecessors), most of the state airlines (Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, SAS etc.), and others like Volkswagen, Renault, Peugeot/PSA, STMicro just to name a few.
That is a good point. Because I am from the US I tend to think of companies as starting private. There are some really important exceptions in the US too: The Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, etc.
From a continental European perspective I'd contest that. Quite a few of today's multinationals here began as either wholly or partly state owned and/or today have still significant state ownership - especially in infrastructure/utility/telecommunications, but also in "strategic" industries. This includes telcos like Deutsche Telekom (with its daughter T-Mobile), former state mail companies like DHL, Airbus (and its numerous predecessors), most of the state airlines (Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, SAS etc.), and others like Volkswagen, Renault, Peugeot/PSA, STMicro just to name a few.