Indice
The ‘static’ concept of the firm to which law and economic science refers, however, undergoes a profound transformation by adopting that particular organisational structure that is so characteristic of multinationals: the corporate group, which, as already mentioned, is the main player on the new world markets.
A parent company (holding or also holding company) incorporates one or more subsidiaries and strategically allocates to some of them activities, labour relations, supply contracts, financial assets, other corporate shareholdings, etc. Except in certain special cases, the holding company bears no direct legal responsibility for all that is contracted through subsidiaries. A single subsidiary may be forced to close, despite the rest of the corporate group generating significant profits. The holding company operates as a kind of collective brain that elaborates the global strategies of the group, whose expansion on the world stage takes place with the creation of numerous ‘daughter companies’, which are provided with their own legal personality, as if they were separate and autonomous firms from the controlling one.
This means that the same ‘group firm’ can operate on the market through an unspecified number of companies.