oh that's true, i meant to say limit of franchises. But I probably need to get a game back to this stage of the game to make a screenshot to be able to show what i mean.
Apart from that, I always felt that it's insanely strong instantly having 20 franchises instead of waiting 60 turns (40 turns for the first batch of routes, and since you have a higher franchise cap than trade route cap, ~20 more turns after that) AND getting rid of the risk of war and losing trade routes and many corporation bonuses. compared to the other corporation traits it's quite insane.