“Crises of every kind — economic crises most frequently, but not only these — in their turn increase the tendency towards concentration and towards monopoly” — Lenin, 1916

MORE than a century later, those words ring particularly true in the times of Covid-19, an era in which a medical crisis has precipitated an economic crisis of proportions unseen since the Great Depression.

Much like the historical crises which Lenin had been analysing, the coronavirus-triggered crisis we are living through can be characterised by a distillation in the wealth of the largest companies.

This accrual of wealth by the richest can be seen most starkly in recent figures by UBS Bank showing that there are now more than 2,189 billionaires, with a record collective wealth of $10.2 trillion.

Among this layer of uber-wealth, the “big five” tech giants have been the biggest winners. Microsoft and Amazon now have valuations of comfortably over $1 trillion, while Google (known as Alphabet) comes close to the trillion-dollar figure, and Facebook is valued in the region of $700 billion. Apple has now become the first company to reach a $2 trillion valuation.