A group of companies is an economic entity formed of a set of companies which are either companies controlled by a same company.

A group of companies is an economic entity formed of a set of companies which are either companies controlled by the same company, or the controlling company itself. Controlling a company means having the power to appoint the majority of its directors. The control of company A by company B may be direct (company B directly holds the majority of voting rights on the management board of company A) or indirect (B controls intermediate companies C, D or E, etc, which it can ask to vote the same way on the management board of A, thereby obtaining a majority of rights).

The French statistical definition currently in force uses the absolute majority of voting rights as its control criterion to define the group contours.

We define:

• The restricted contour, or “core”, of the group as all the companies more than 50% owned, directly or indirectly, by a parent company heading the group; the parent company is not more than 50% owned either directly or indirectly by another company. In this definition, groups form pairwise disjoint sets;
• The enlarged contour of a group as all the companies in which the group holds shares, irrespective of the holding percentage; thus the enlarged contours of the groups do not form a division and a company can belong.