A Holding company is a company, which has the purpose of owning stock (or shares) of other companies. In most cases, such companies do not sell products or services, they manage the companies they (partly) own. Probably one of the best known holding companies was the "Standard Oil of New Jersey", founded in 1889, which is called ExxonMobil today.In general, there are three forms:

1. the holding company owns stock/shares of other companies; activities are limited to managing the companies.
2. in addition to the above, the companies have a common management, which take the strategic decisions.
3. in addition to item 1, the management influences the distribution of capital to its daughter companies. The holding is mainly used for managing financial resources.