If one company(A) owns another company(B) and Company B owns a third company (C) is it safe to say that Company A owns part of Company C?

A real life example is the sports media group TSN is 20% owned by ESPN. ESPN is then in turn 80% owned by The Walt Disney Company. Can I say that Disney owns 16% of TSN?

Yes, it is safe to say that Company A owns a part of Company C indirectly through its ownership of Company B. In this real-life example, since ESPN owns 20% of TSN and The Walt Disney Company owns 80% of ESPN, you can say that Disney indirectly owns 16% of TSN (0.2 * 0.8 = 0.16 or 16%).

No, you cannot directly say that The Walt Disney Company (Company A) owns 16% of TSN (Company C) based on the given ownership structures.

In this case, while The Walt Disney Company indirectly owns TSN through its ownership of ESPN (Company B), it does not mean that the ownership percentages are directly transferable. The ownership percentages refer to the ownership stakes within each company, not the percentage of ownership that flows through the chain.

To determine the exact ownership percentage of TSN that The Walt Disney Company holds, you would need to know the specific ownership percentage of ESPN within TSN. Without that information, you cannot accurately calculate the ownership stake of The Walt Disney Company in TSN.

Yes, in this scenario, it is correct to say that The Walt Disney Company owns 16% of TSN.

To arrive at this conclusion, you have to consider the ownership percentages between the companies. TSN is 20% owned by ESPN, and ESPN is 80% owned by The Walt Disney Company.

To calculate the percentage of TSN that Disney owns, you multiply the ownership percentages. So, 20% ownership of TSN multiplied by 80% ownership of ESPN equals 16%. Therefore, Disney owns 16% of TSN.