English to German Bus/Financial Idioms / Maxims / Sayings Unternehmensgeschichte

It was the job of the RCC ‘to perform services in the field of automatic information processing’ for departments and government and semi-government bodies ‘if the Minister of Internal Affairs has granted his approval for this’. In 1990, RCC became an independent body and a public limited company with all shares owned by the government. RCC started to expand its range of services. This led to acquisition of the Maatschappij voor Informaticadiensten and the Instituut voor Enquête Verwerking. The former RCC became an operating company and ***was put on an equal footing*** with companies acquired earlier. In order to avoid confusion, the name was changed to Roccade Informatica Groep NV in 1995.



Ich weiß natürlich, dass "on an equal footing" wörtlich so viel heißt, wie "gleichberechtigt"/"gleichwertig", aber was genau bedeutet das in Bezug auf den Status des Unternehmens und der übernommenen Unternehmen? Danke!