(1) Subject to subsections (2) to (4), in this section, "group" means a company which has one or more 51 per cent subsidiaries but is not itself a 51 per cent subsidiary of any other company, together with those subsidiaries.
(2) Where the whole or a significant part of the business carried on by an unquoted company (in this section referred to as "the successor company") was previously carried on by -
(a) the company making the purchase, or
(b) a company which apart from this subsection is a member of a group to which the company making the purchase belongs,
the successor company and any company of which it is a 51 per cent subsidiary shall be treated as being a member of the same group as the company making the purchase, whether or not apart from this subsection the company making the purchase is a member of a group.
(3) Subsection (2) shall not apply if the successor company first carried on the business referred to in that subsection more than 3 years before the time of the purchas
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