Consortium
[1] Consortium is a Latin word meaning "partnership", "association", or "society", and derives from consors ("shared in property"), itself from con- ("together") and sors ("fate").
[3] This arrangement led to inefficiencies due to the inherent conflicts of interest that the four partner companies faced; they were both shareholders of, and subcontractors to, the consortium.
The companies collaborated on development of the Airbus range, but guarded the financial details of their own production activities and sought to maximize the transfer prices of their sub-assemblies.
The Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) became the only export operator of the Tornado in addition to the three original partner nations.
For example, the GENIVI Alliance, now called COVESA, is a not-for-profit consortium between different car makers in order to ease building an In-Vehicle Infotainment system.
In this association its members contribute by paying equal amount installments (usually monthly or weekly) towards a common fund.
[7] On every installment the common fund reaches the goal value and someone is awarded this sum and from this point forward this person own the association the remaining amount, just as in a loan.
These informal associations are specially popular among immigrants since they are a cheaper alternative to traditional financing and usually require no formal papers, credit history or even a bank account.
In some countries, like Brazil, consórcios are an integral part of the traditional banking system, where there are clubs for purchasing real estate and cars, and even for plastic surgery costs.
Over seven million people have engaged in these formal savings associations over the past years, adding to over U$10 billion in credit.
In France, the consortium, considered a sub-type of joint venture, has important theoretical and practical significance.
The French legal system does not provide a definition and does not explicitly use the concept of a joint venture or consortium (groupements momentanés d’entreprises).
[11] In Germany the view prevails that the consortium is a type of internal civil law partnership (§ 705–740 of the BGB).
Sometimes, special purpose partnerships established to jointly use construction facilities (Planungsgesellschaften) are listed in one category with the consortium and the pool.
According to the prevailing approach, a consortium is a form of cooperation, different from a civil law partnership, undertaken between economically independent entities already operating on the market in order to implement a specific undertaking that is a segment of the regular activities of these entities, based on an unnamed contract and characterized by a temporary nature, minimization of institutionalization, and lack of separate property, the need to specify how the parties participate in the joint venture and the intention not to establish a "community" with partly own interests (the partnership as such).
