In the late 1800's and early 1900's, United Fruit (Chiquita OTL) and Standard Fruit (Dole OTL), bitter economic enemies, independently realised their position. They held a stranglehold upon the economies of Latin America, and in a bold move that started a chain reaction, United Fruit deposed el Presidente Jacobo Arbenz Guzmàn with the help of the United States.
Rather than install a local, the President of United Fruit installed a puppet government, which appeased Dwight D. Eisenhower and his anti-communist sympathies. Standard Fruit, seeing the powers of United Fruit proliferating through Latin America came to the negotiating table with a devious and dangerous, but lucrative plan.
The plan: United Fruit and Standard Fruit would pool their energies and monies. Standard Fruit had already acquired the Hawaiian island of Lanai'i. The growing consensus among Americans (fueled no doubt by the propaganda campaign that Standard Fruit fueled) was that Hawai'i and the other Sandwich islands were more of a liability than America's true gateway to the Far East. Standard Fruit moved quietly to purchase land on the islands as it became possible. Between their legitimate land purchases and those brokered through secret 'daughter' companies, Standard Fruit gained a very strong hold on the islands and economies of the Hawaiian Islands.
With the loss of population, the Hawaiian Islanders quickly gave up hope of statehood and resigned themselves to benevolent territorial status. This change fostered Standard Fruit's growth in the islands as well.
With the onset of the Korean War, the campaigns of United and Standard Fruit in the propaganda market increased. With only a matter of time, United Fruit was able to consolidate its holdings in Latin America, erecting puppet governments and eliminating those that would withstand them, including an upstart revolutionary, Fidel Castro.
With the war in Korea looking very poorly, the US was in need of funds. Standard Fruit offered, with feigned recalcitrance, to purchase those portions of the Sandwich Island chain that the US deigned to sell. This quickly evolved into a wholesale land purchase from the US Government, quickly reducing the Hawaiian Islands to a fief of Standard Fruit, who paid a weak tribute.
This move was followed shortly by an even bolder move of United Fruit, the hostile military takeover of some islands of the Philippines. While this fact was not known until recent history, at the time this military action was blamed on insurgent locals, and the Filipino government, fractured from this military action, eagerly welcomed the support of United Fruit, who, before the end of the 1960's had secured the entire chain of islands.
In 1985 United and Standard Fruits merged, becoming Tropical World, LTD. The holdings had increased from more than simple Fruit production, but Railroad, transit industries and the increasing oil producing capacities of these regions of the world.
The growth and power of Tropical World, LTD. over the decades of the Twentieth Century was not ignored by other corporations. By the end of the Twentieth Century megacorporations had formed, and many world governments had been relegated to glorified worker's unions, impuissant against the power of the Capitalistic powers.
Later Communist leaders saw the model of this growth and diverged from their strong anti-capitalist mores, becoming the Communist Corporations of the World.
It was only a matter of time before these now powerful economic behemoths clashed together, each buying out the other.