big business

big business (uncountable)

1. (sometimes capitalized) Large, for-profit corporations collectively, understood as having significant economic, political, or social influence.
   • 1940 March 18, “Life on the Newsfronts of the World: Big Government”, in Life, retrieved 13 December 2011, page 26:

     Because he is liberal, temperate and articulate, and because he freely recognizes past Big Business abuses, Wendell L. Willkie, president of huge Commonwealth & Southern Corp., is in a class by himself as a persuasive businessman-critic of the New Deal. . . . "Today it is not Big Business that we have to fear," concluded Businessman Wilkie. "It is Big Government."

   • 1998 March 17, Clifford Krauss, “International Business: Argentine Labor Code Largely Intact”, in New York Times, retrieved 14 December 2011:

     In an uncharacteristic rebuff to big business, President Carlos Saul Menem plans this week to propose a package of labor regulations that leaves intact most Government-mandated severance benefits and limits companies' right to hire part-time workers.

   • 2005 January 17, Chaim Estulin, “Hong Kong's New Culture”, in Time:

     That smacks of cozy dealings between the government and the tycoons . . . . "Invariably, people see this as a conspiracy between the government and big business," says legislator Alan Leong.

By extension, the pattern of big + is now sometimes used humorously, as for example in He tried to innovate in his pastry menu, boldly defying Big Cupcake.

(in specific industries)

• big ag (Big Ag)
• big pharma (Big Pharma)
• big tech (Big Tech)
• big tobacco (Big Tobacco)

(in specific numbers of titans)

• Big Four
• Big Three

• big government
• big labor
• big money