Toward Corporate Group Accountability

This chapter contributes to the Handbook of Corporate Liability, Martin Petrin & Christian Witting, eds. (Edward Elgar: 2022). It discusses the challenges of imposing liability on corporate groups that are composed of separate legal entities under common control or coordination but which themselves generally lack an independent legal status. These challenges have proven difficult to resolve because they derive from the very features that have made corporate groups the dominant business actors worldwide. This chapter proposes reforms that could strengthen parent companies’ incentives to internalize the operational risks of their subsidiaries and business partners and also explores alternative paths to corporate group accountability beyond legal remedies