ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an overview of the implementation of the EC Seventh Directive. Consolidation practices in the EC were very varied in the mid-1970s when the Seventh Directive was first drafted. Consolidation was unknown in some member states even in the 1980s; in Germany a partial form of consolidation was required for public companies in a 1965 Act; in France consolidation for listed companies gradually became the norm from the early 1970s. Because of this lack of development in much of continental Europe, the Seventh Directive, which was first published in draft in 1976, was based largely on the developed practices of the UK, Ireland and The Netherlands, which in turn owed much to US precedents.
