Law Commons^™

Changing Paradigms: The Liability Of Corporate Groups In Germany, René Reich-Graefe

Faculty Scholarship

The German law on affiliated companies and groups of companies ("Konzernrecht"), as embodied in the German Stock Corporation Act of 1965, as amended ("Aktiengesetz"), has often been credited for its innovative approach to the dichotomy of liability strategies relevant to corporate groups-viz., the traditional concept of entity liability based on the fundamental doctrine of the legal separateness of the corporate entity and, accordingly, resulting in a limitation of investor liability as the rule, and discrete and rare occurrences of what is almost poetically designated the "piercing of the corporate veil" ("DurchgriffshaJtung") as narrow and reluctantly crafted exceptions, and the more …