Groups of companies are used to avoid liability risks and, as a rule, one company is not made liable for another company’s debts. However, sustaining this separated liability is not always successful and, in exceptional cases, a parent company is made liable. This fact is well known in German law, although some issues still remain unexplained today. Recently, this liability has increasingly occurred in European antitrust law, and it appears as if such cases are no longer isolated incidents but have become standard. Such liability threatens the organisation of groups of companies without the liability of the parent company. However, this matter is protected by both the German and European legal systems, which therefore have to answer the question of how such liability can be justified. This work examines this question.
