Limited liability consortia: possible organizations and other legal issues

Emanuele Cusa

Keywords

Consortium; limited liability of members; profit and mutual purposes; company law

Abstract

More and more, Italian small and medium-sized enterprises are established as limited liability consortium to keep competitive on the market. According to Italian law to set up such a business organization is possible to choose out of four legal forms: società a responsabilità limitata, società per azioni, società in accomandita per azioni and società cooperativa. In this writing two set of problems are mainly dealt with: (i) the hierarchy between the law of the business organization chosen by entrepreneurs and the law of the consortium contract in order to determine what is the law applicable to the said entity; (ii) the legitimate purposes of a consortium with legal personality (for-profit/non-profit/mutual).