Everything about Consortium totally explained
A
consortium is an
association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal.
Consortium is a
Latin word, meaning 'partnership, association or society' and derives from
consors 'partner', itself from
con- 'together' and
sors 'fate', meaning
owner of means or
comrade.
Economics
Each participant retains its separate legal status and the consortium's control over each participant is generally limited to activities involving the joint endeavor, particularly the division of profits. A consortium is formed by
contract, which delineates the rights and obligations of each member. Consortia are more common in the
nonprofit sector. A more permanent joint activity is usually called an
institute.
Examples
For example,
Five Colleges, Inc. is one of the oldest and most successful consortia in the
United States. The participants in Five Colleges, Inc. are:
Amherst College,
Hampshire College,
Mount Holyoke College,
Smith College, and the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Another example of a successful consortium is the
Five Colleges of Ohio of Ohio:
Oberlin College,
Ohio Wesleyan University,
Kenyon College,
College of Wooster and
Denison University. These consortia have pooled the resources of their member colleges and the university to share human and material assets as well as to link academic and administrative resources.
An example of a for-profit consortium was
Airbus Industrie ("Airbus"). Formed in 1970, Airbus is one of the world's premier manufacturers of civilian airliners. Airbus is now owned by
EADS. EADS itself is a merger of
Aérospatiale-Matra of
France,
Daimler-Chrysler Aerospace of
Germany, and
Construcciones Aeronáuticas of
Spain, which were originally separate partners in the consortium, owning 37.9%, 37.9%, and 4.2%, respectively. BAE Systems owned the remaining 20% but sold this in 2006. Airbus' status as a consortium means that profits accrue to the partner companies representative to their interests. Work is allocated on the same basis as profits.
Another example of a for-profit consortium is when a group of banks collaborate to give a loan. This is more commonly known as a
syndicated loan. In England it's common for a consortium to buy out financially struggling football clubs in order to keep them out of
liquidation.
Famous consortia
Further Information
Get more info on 'Consortium'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://consortium.totallyexplained.com">Consortium Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
