Sometimes it was just a way of raising a bit of cash without losing control of the unit.
The failure to sell stakes in large public energy and engineering concerns suggests that Mr Berlusconi thinks that privatisation means raising cash without losing control.
In the mid-1980s Franco Reviglio, then chairman of Eni and a former finance minister, openly described privatisation as a good way of raising cash without losing control.
Some governments are also using resource cash to maintain control.
Imaginative though the new plans are, they are based on the belief that you can persuade the private sector to borrow and spend more in the current environment, even when everyone's natural instinct -including, apparently, Mr Osborne's - is to conserve cash and get control of their debts.
He already has de facto power, and control of cash coming from Moscow, supposedly for reconstruction.
Maybe, but that will require tight day-to-day control over cash outflows, a novelty for this government.
After fighting the Spanish for control, cash-strapped Napoleon Bonaparte begrudgingly sold it to Thomas Jefferson in 1803.
Ultimately, however, and particularly after it acquired PayPal so it could control the cash flow, eBay changed its tune.
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MMSAs will have this impact because patients will personally own their policies and control the cash deposited in their medical savings accounts.
Rather, privatisation became little more than a convenient mechanism for raising large sums of cash without giving up control of the companies concerned.
So at their current rate of looting, OPEC will accumulate enough cash to buy majority control of the entire Fortune 500 within 6 years.
All three governments are keen to raise cash but reluctant to cede control.
He says he wants to encourage plastic payments because he believes they are "safer and easier to control" than cash.
Nor can they have their whole cake and eat it too: If you trade equity for cash, you will give up control.
But it would be odd if the impact was terribly significant - largely because they have all been downgraded, and those who control vast pots of cash have to put their money somewhere.
You could name a guardian for the money, but a trust allows you to spell out how the money should be spent and at what age and under what conditions your child should gain control of any remaining cash.
Mr Skuratov has upset Mr Yeltsin by poking away at the property-management agency of the Kremlin, which is reputed to control billions of dollars of cash and other assets.
And if central bankers sought to control money, however defined, by targeting the monetary base cash in circulation and commercial-bank reserves held with the central bank they lost control of the short-term interest rate, which might move erratically and damage the economy.
De La Rue will provide forecasts of the demand for cash but it is up to customers to control the supply of their currency.
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These partnerships shelter all manner of assets--stock, real estate, cash--with the parents usually remaining in control as general partners while giving the kids assets in the form of limited partnership units.
In a surprisingly sunny suburb of Manchester, two motherless little boys one pious and generous (Alex Etel), the other enterprising and manipulative (Lewis McGibbon) gain control of a Nike bag filled with cash after thieves throw it off a moving train.
Mr. Zaw Zaw's plan was for Max Myanmar to have gained majority control of Aussino, allowing it to raise cash through share sales in Singapore and fund an expansion of its gas-station network across Myanmar.
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At the same time, they have poured arms and cash on Hizbullah and ordered it to expand its territorial control north of the Litani River, while enacting an ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon by preventing Christians who fled their villages during the war from returning home.
But he offered few details about the terms of public-cash infusions or whether they would, eventually, imply government control.
Cash-value life insurance is another vehicle that gives you control and access to your money when you need it.
At the same time, Sony is balancing cash inflows and outflows while working to improve its cash flow by carefully selecting investments, selling assets and strengthening control of working capital such as inventory.
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Pacific Crest Securities Senior Research Analyst Steve Clement said that the new mobile broadband company is a pretty good deal for Sprint because it will retain majority control of the entity without having to contribute any cash into the venture.
Zimbabwe's cash-starved banks, and a central bank that has lost control of its currency, mirror challenges in other countries, including Greece, Malawi and Swaziland.
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