Business groups - European development and trends of their legal regulation

Business groups are bodies that can be found in all economically developed countries, not only in Eu­rope. They bring their participants significant econo­mic advantages, enable the assertion of economic go­als unified with all the members of the group, allow them to focus on certain areas considered to be of key importance from the point of view of the whole, and strengthen the sources enabling the assertion of these unified interests. Moreover they provide an opportu­nity for the localisation and compensation of losses, as they allow the concentration of unfavourable consequences of business only with some participants of the group. For legal regulation, however, their existence brings quite new problems, because these groups can only with difficulties be described by legal categories that we commonly use when dealing with the subjects of legal relationships.