Although no special legal form exists in the United Kingdom to facilitate cooperation between companies, such as the French Groupement d’intérêt Economique,1 and although U.K. law contains no provisions concerning contractual and ad hoc relationships between companies comparable to those of German Konzernrecht, companies co-operate together in the U.K. in a number of ways. Certain forms of co-operation may be rendered impermissible by restrictive practices and monopoly legislation at the national and Community level. Companies often lend assistance or perform services for other companies or groups of companies pursuing a different activity without any new co-operative venture coming into being. One may instance in this regard the activities of confirming houses, forwarding agents and merchant banks in the export trade. Companies engaged in shipping co-operate together in conferences which fix freight rates. Banking companies have often co-operated together in recent years to provide syndicated loans, especially for the oil industry. Companies often form joint subsidiaries within or outside the U.K. for the purpose of research, advertising or marketing. Such subsidiaries may be difficult to distinguish from consortia.

Consorita of various kinds have become very common in the U.K., partly owing to the large capital requirements of certain projects. They are to be found in the construction of nuclear power stations, steelworks, tyre factories, blast furnaces and rolling mills, foundries, paper mills, oil refineries and large scale engineering projects.2 Consortium banks have recently become of great importance. A. H. Boulton3 has defined a consortium as the organisation which is created when two or more companies co-operate to act as a single entity for a specific and limited purpose. This purpose may be a single one, limited in time and place, or may be expected to continue indefinitely and be of a general scope. The organisation may be a company formed under the Companies Acts, or it may be a looser organisation having partnership-like characteristics, or it may merely consist of a framework for facilitating a joint approach. Thus banks often co-operate together in providing syndicated loans to the oil industry. Barclays Bank is part of a transatlantic 12-bank syndicate which recently arranged a $825 million loan to the British National Oil Corporation.4