The concept of holding: a vision of legal definition in the context of recent legislative decisions

The article examines the problems of legislative definition of the concept of holding companies as important subjects of legal relations in various spheres of economic activity and industries. The author analyses innovations in the regulatory definition of a holding company. In a special act – the Law of Ukraine «On Holding Companies» – the legislator has abandoned the definition of enterprises controlled by a holding company as subsidiaries and calls them corporate enterprises. As a result, the term «corporate enterprises» in this law is applied to companies that are dependent on and controlled by a holding company. It is proved that this approach leads to confusion of legal categories and violation of the rules of legal technique, since in the general legal sense corporate enterprises are cooperatives, business associations, and other enterprises, including those based on private ownership of two or more persons. The term «corporate enterprises» refers to the organisational and legal form of a legal entity. The article analyses the conflict of provisions of the Commercial Code of Ukraine and the special Law of Ukraine «On Holding Companies» which form the legal definition of the concept of holding. It is proved that the Commercial Code of Ukraine, which is an act of general application in regulating relations with participation of holding companies, contains a narrower concept than the special law. This indicates different concepts of the concept of holding in the basic laws - according to the special law, the concept of holding includes state holding companies, while according to the Commercial Code of Ukraine, state holding companies are excluded from the general perspective of holding. The author substantiates the need to revise the legislative approach to the definition of a holding company with due regard for the rule-making innovations related, in particular, to the abolition of the Commercial Code of Ukraine declared by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the change in the concept of the enterprise. The author proposes to form a new legal model of the concept of a holding company using the term ‘subsidiary company’ in relation to the legal entities which it manages.