Power to Truth: Global Markets, Hidden Ownership, and the Power of Data

What happens when power and truth collide in a world of complex corporate structures, globalized markets, and tightly controlled narratives? In this episode of the web series Power to Truth, Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) Professor and Corporations and Society Initiative (CASI) Director Anat Admati spoke with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and entrepreneur David Barboza. Together, they explored the intersection of power, transparency, and accountability in the global financial system with China as a central case study.

Barboza shared insights from his groundbreaking journalism uncovering corruption in China. His 2012 investigation for The New York Times revealed that relatives of senior Chinese officials secretly owned shares in public and private companies through complex networks of shell companies. The story, which relied on a meticulous analysis of corporate records, led China to shut down the Times’ Mandarin news service, block access to its English-language website, and deny visas to journalists.

To Barboza’s surprise, China has some of the best corporate records.  “You can get private company records, you can get public company records,” he remarked. “I did not know when I began this investigation that we could actually use government documents to prove the case, that government officials and their families were holding secret shares.”

Admati highlighted the stark contrast between China’s accessible corporate data and the opacity in the U.S., where beneficial ownership often remains hidden even from the government. She emphasized the importance of transparency and the work of investigative journalists in holding power to account.

The discussion turned to Barboza’s entrepreneurial journey as co-founder of WireScreen, a news and data platform inspired by his investigative work in China. Barboza explained how his labor-intensive process of mapping corporate connections manually over 18 months motivated him to create a platform capable of automating and scaling such investigations.

WireScreen aims to aggregate millions of corporate records into a searchable database, similar to a Bloomberg terminal subscription. The database enables rapid analysis and insights into complex questions about ownership, corruption, and industry ties.

“Are these companies state-owned companies?” he asked. “Are they privately held military companies? What can we know about a lot of companies that we put into the database and search in a new way? We’re not answering one question about corruption but answering many questions.”

WireScreen currently focuses on China and related jurisdictions, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and U.S.-China connections. Barboza explained that he and his team aim to gradually expand to other countries with robust corporate or trade data, such as Vietnam, Russia, India, and offshore havens like the Cayman Islands. He emphasized the platform’s potential to explore interlinked datasets across ownership, investments, and trade—a “golden triangle” of corporate transparency that no other company fully offers.

Admati and Barboza discussed the challenges of uncovering hidden information in the U.S., where corporate privacy laws often obscure ownership, particularly for privately held companies. Barboza, however, was quick to point to other valuable datasets that can be accessed.

“You get great ownership data on publicly traded companies. You can get certain amounts of trade data, and you can get patent data,” he said.

He also mentioned more advanced investigative tools such as TransUnion's TLOxp®, a database used by licensed investigators, law enforcement agencies, corporate risk managers and journalists to obtain even greater granular personal data.

“Each country is different,” he said, “and you have to figure out what is in the country that I want to focus on, and how can it help me in an investigation, but also being mindful as a journalist, what are your journalistic ethics?”

Barboza explained how WireScreen is advancing corporate transparency globally by mapping ownership, investments, and supplier relationships across jurisdictions. With companies operating more globally, understanding cross-border connections, such as offshore wealth or trade relationships, is becoming increasingly vital.

Admati and Barboza discussed the broad applications of corporate transparency tools like WireScreen and the gaps in government capabilities that create demand for private-sector solutions. Barboza explains that while some governments, like those in China, collect and share extensive corporate data, the U.S. relies heavily on private platforms for similar insights.

“This is core to what we do, versus the government. They change administrations, their specialty is not corporate ownership,” he said.  “I love corporate structures. I love investigating corporate structures and learning about them.”

Admati and Barboza discussed why corporate structures are often so complex, balancing practical and regulatory purposes with potential for opacity. Barboza highlighted the Variable Interest Entity (VIE) structure as a prime example of regulatory-driven complexity. VIEs enable foreign investors to participate in restricted sectors in China, such as technology, by routing investments through offshore entities.

“Let’s say Goldman Sachs wants to invest in Alibaba. Goldman Sachs goes offshore to the Cayman Islands to invest onshore through Hong Kong,” he explained. “It’s not that they are trying to hide it necessarily. It is for regulatory purposes.”

Admati pointed out that this setup gives China leverage over foreign investors, as it retains the power to invalidate these arrangements if China feels their laws are being undermined. Barboza noted that despite these risks, VIEs have been instrumental in attracting foreign capital and building major Chinese tech companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance.

Barboza ended the discussion by sharing the challenges that come with his startup venture.

“How do you build a company that can map global business networks, something that’s never been done before across borders? And how do you more quickly scale that?”

He acknowledged the technical challenges of navigating multiple jurisdictions and languages but expressed optimism about the role of artificial intelligence in overcoming them. AI, he said, can be trained on vast datasets to automate complex investigative tasks, significantly boosting efficiency and paving the way for success.