There is no legal or universally accepted definition of business restructurings.   Business restructurings that are within the scope of the OECD project are defined as the cross-border redeployment by a multinational enterprise of functions, assets and/or risks. A business restructuring may involve cross-border transfers of key intangibles.

Business representatives who participated in the January 2005 CTPA Roundtable explained that among the business reasons for restructuring are the wish to maximise synergies and economies of scale, to streamline the management of business lines and to improve the efficiency of the supply chain, taking advantage of the development of Internet-based technologies that has facilitated the emergence of global organisations.

During the last decade, typical restructurings have consisted of:

• Conversion of full-fledged distributors into limited risk distributors or commissionnaires for a related party that operates as a principal,
• Conversion of full-fledged manufacturers into contract-manufacturers or toll-manufacturers for a related party that operates as a principal,
• Rationalisation and/or specialisation of operations (manufacturing sites and/or processes, research and development activities, sales, services),
• Transfer of intellectual property to a single entity within the group.

A restructuring might be implemented as a result of a merger or acquisition although this is not always the case. Corporate reorganisations such as mergers and acquisitions are not within the scope of this project which concentrates on those restructurings which consist of internal changes in the way an activity is conducted within a multinational group of enterprises.