Groups of Companies

Groups of Companies

In the original Insolvency Regulation the focus was much very on the particular individual company of a group of companies and not on its possible status as a member of a group of companies. In one sense, this focus was understandable for the Regulation is very much a conflict-of-laws instrument rather than a substantive law instrument. Provisions, for example, for the pooling of assets of related companies would trench on the fundamental principle of substantive company law, reaffirmed by the UK Supreme Court,¹ that a company is a legal entity, separate and distinct from its controlling shareholders.² Nevertheless, the Regulation might have contained procedurally oriented provisions enabling the IP to be appointed to different companies within the same corporate group and providing for proceedings involving related group companies to be administered from the same state.

The jurisprudence from the European Court has also been generally unsympathetic to the notion of procedural