I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps [...] During that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. [...]

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.
Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC, "War is a Racket," 1935

My series on imperialism as a function of the private sector took a confusing turn when I introduced the US occupation of Haiti, both as an example of pecuniary imperialism, and as an example of vocational imperialism. Under the political climate prevailing in 1915, it was impossible for a corporation to launch an invasion in order to win rent-seeking opportunities. Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler's remarkable confession, while appearing to contradict this outright, actually does not: his five-part essay argues that there is a deeply-ingrained institutional preference for war on the part of the capitalist elites. War is occurs because it is anticipated. It is something cultivated by legislators or dictators as opportunists. For this to be so, it is not necessary to insist the National City Bank's staff launched the invasion of Haiti with a phone call to the White House.

Allow me to return to my original thread of narrative: in the 1920's the main wave of economic expansion in the USA was domestic, in the expansion of industry and in merger mania. A secondary focus was in the economies of South America, rather than Central America.¹

This pattern—where a country tends to have little direct financial involvement in areas where it invests—is true for the British Empire and the French Empire. During the zenith of British global dominance, UK capital flows favored the USA, dominions like Australia and Canada, Mexico, and the Southern Cone. France, likewise, did not invest primarily in Vietnam or Algeria, but in Central and Eastern Europe. Colonies such as Senegal, Guinea-Conakry, and Madagascar were targets of purely extractive industries such as logging, rubber, cash crops, or mining.²

The main object of the great industrial concerns in the post-WW1 era went two different directions after 1920: in Japan, there was a concerted effort by the state and the zaibatsu to develop the regions falling under the sway of the Chrysanthemum Throne, while replacing the laissez-faire policies of the late Meiji era.³ Japan had inherited from Russia control of a railway corridor in Dongbei (Manchuria), then under the control of the warlord Chang Tso-lin. In 1928, the part of the Japanese army patroling the rail corridor secretly bombed Chang's personal train car, then, after more intrigue, occupied the entire region of Manchuria (1931). At this time, a finance minister named Korekiyo Takehashi (bio, PDF) introduced a policy of monetizing the debt, and unintentionally facilitated the militarization of the economy.

While Japan and Italy slid towards a cartelization and syndicalization of its economy, France sought to establish manufacturing, oil, and chemicals industries under increasingly direct partnership with the state. As with Japan, the relationship was through trade associations and highly personal. France ahd the equivalent of an "oil czar," Ernest Mercier, who coordinated the creation of a powerful French oil cartel.⁴ As in the two decades before Armistice, imperialism entered a phase of uneasy quiescence; there was a shuffling of deeds under the mandates, with only opportunistic roles for finance capital and money markets, then a decade of statist management of enterprise formation (through cartels, trusts [Western Europe], trade associations [Japan, USA], syndicates [Italy, Spain], the NEP [USSR]). Capital markets were extremely active and experienced rapid flows, accompanied by several regional episodes of illiquidity (mid-20's). This concealed their declining role relative to the enterprises that used capital for major operations.

In the 1930's, the Americas drifted apart from the rest of the developed world; Japan and Western Europe suffered a brief, "mild" depression, which discredited neoliberal economic policies. However, there was a concurrent outburst of violent antilabor repression, ushering in rightwing statism and a renewed activism on the part of business enterprise in imperialism. The USA, during this period, experienced pressures in the same direction, but did not succumb.

(Private Sector Imperialism-5)

3 The end of the Meiji Period (1868-1912) saw the rise of neoclassical economic policies; in the Taisho period (1912-1926) and with the onset of WW1, Japan's economy undertook a period of intensively managed economic development. The agenda was import substitution and export-expansion; both projects were successful to 1920, when Japan entered a period of protracted slow-growth and recession (1927-1932; see "The Organization of the Developmental State," PDF, William Mass & Hideaki Miyajima, 1993):

In summary, one major reason for Japan's inter-war economic success was the effectiveness of emerging industrial policy and intermediate organizations which supported both "managerial" enterprises and small and medium size firms. Export expansion was subsidized by the planning and coordination of government-supported local labs and trade associations. Import substitution entailed industrial policy subsidization and administrative guidance for cartels and trading companies.
[p.16]

In the interwar period, the most developed managerial structures were within the small headquarters and subsidiary branches of zaibatsu affiliated enterprises. For the most part, relatively small companies tended to be specialized, and ownership was highly personal and concentrated.
[p.17]

4 Source: "Toward a French Holding Company" (PDF), Mohamed Sassi, 2004:

In 1921, French investments in the oil sector totaled only 900 million francs. Desmarais Frères’ share was 142 million, based on 15.75 percent allotted to the firm within the consortium. Even if one adds the estimate of the French interests invested in Romania (900 million) and Poland (800 million) in 1923-1924, investments were still far from Royal-Dutch Shell’s (3500 million francs) during that time.

The French state reacted to this difficult situation. It was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, determined to regain control of French interests, both within the country and abroad. A technocratic approach seemed inevitable in aligning these interests in a way beneficial to France. Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré relied upon Ernest Mercier to develop and orchestrate the relationships between the government and the various protagonists.
[p.7]

Well aware of its potential future interest in the Middle East, the French State organized the establishment of an oil industry structure. A January 10, 1925 law created the ONCL, directed by Louis Pineau. The role of this office consisted not only of studying questions related to the oil industry, but also (thanks to a significant budget allocation) allotting premiums to tankers that were French flag carriers, and financing oil exploration in France and in the colonies. The ONCL was a public utility placed under the direct authority of the Minister of Commerce and Industry.
[p.12-13]