Acquisition of an enterprise
The concept of an enterprise/business
There are no legal definitions of an enterprise or a business in (valid) Austrian commercial law. In the prevailing academic opinion and the literature, it is often held that the enterprise should be considered a property as a whole within the meaning of Section 302 ABGB [Austrian civil code], as a totality of assets, physical (e.g. real property, plant) as well as incorporeal (receivables, liabilities).
The UGB (Unternehmensgesetzbuch [enterprise code]) that will come into effect on 1 January 2007 in its Section 1 para. 2 defines an enterprise as “every organisation of independent economic activity designed for continued operation, even if it is not for profit”. Accordingly, the enterprise can be characterised as separate property or an organised position of employment, as an organisation of a multiplicity of assets of economic effect that are unified to form an organic whole.
A differentiation must be made between the concept of an enterprise and the concept of a business, which is a part of an enterprise in which human labour and corporeal means of production are integrated into an organisational unit.
Types of acquisition of an enterprise
