Introduction
The English Company Law has an essential principle called the capital maintenance doctrine, which dictates that a corporation must receive appropriate consideration for issued shares, and those once issued cannot be repaid back to its members, except under certain circumstances. The CA 2006 made numerous significant changes to the capital maintenance rules, hence relaxing several statutory requirements.
Capital Maintenance Doctrine
The general principle of this doctrine were created originally by the courts but they have been gradually superseded by stature, such as Part V of the CA 1985 and Parts 17, 18 and 23 of the CA 2006. This doctrine supports the regulations in the following significant areas: 1) decrease of a corporations’ reserves and/or share capital; 2) the corporation purchase of its own shares or redemption; 3) disbursement of dividends and additional distributions to shareholders; and 4) prohibition of financial assistance for the acquisition of the corporations’ own shares. As mentioned before the CA 2006 relaxed a few statutory provisions, namely a) private corporations, in most situations, would no longer have the rules regarding unlawful financial assistance, as well as they will be permitted to reduce their share capital without court intervention.
Distribution
Part 23 lays out the proper rules in regarding to distributions. The distribution or payment of dividends cannot be executed in favor of the members unless there are available
The highly controversial case of Gambotto v WCP Ltd not only reduced the ability of companies to acquire shares compulsorily through an amendment to their constitutions, but also stimulated debate around the topic of share acquisition itself . The High Court decision in Gambotto was recognized immediately to be extremely important in the corporate world, with one headline stating it had “radically altered the balance of power within corporate Australia” . Despite the significance of the ruling, responses to Gambotto have generally been negative. Courts have almost uniformly chosen not to extend the principles in Gambotto to situations in other cases, with the result that the principles have stayed narrowly confined to the
Medical technology is advancing rapidly with each passing minute. It is becoming more urgent for health care facilities to invest in equipment that is current and state of the art. Behind these advancements are proven statistics that certain equipment is a necessity when diagnosing and treating patients. We, as health care workers, owe it to our patients to have the best possible equipment in our facilities. Aside from non-melanoma skin cancer, breast cancer has become the most common cancer among women in the United States. Breast cancer does not discriminate. It is one of the
* However, if these payments are unreasonable, then distribution is considered a ‘constructive dividend’ and is no longer deductible
Impositions of restrictions by a firm on the funds allocated for fresh investment is called internal capital rationing.
Corporate capacity and authority were essential legal concepts which contained rules for when and how a company ought to be legally recognised as having validly acted and entered into a binding contract with third parties. Broadly speaking, the rules which applied to corporate capacity were the ultra vires doctrine and the doctrine of constructive notice. In regard to the concept of corporate authority, both the ultra vires doctrine and the doctrine of constructive notice also applied however their application was curtailed by the Turquand rule. The Turquand rule therefore only applied when the authority of directors was in question. A definitional overview of the concepts of corporate capacity and authority will be provided below, along with brief description of the doctrine of constructive notice and the Turquand rule.
Rule 23.1 governs derivative suits in which a plaintiff seeks to assert a right belonging to a corporation (or similar entity) in which the plaintiff is a shareholder, on behalf of the corporation that is not pursuing the claim itself. Rule 23.2 governs actions by or against unincorporated associations (Rule 23, 2009).
S254D(1) CA: In a proprietary company, before issuing shares of a particular class, the director must offer them to the existing holders of shares of that class. As far as practicable, the number of shares offered to each shareholder must be in proportion to the number of shares of that class that they already hold.
Hanrahan, P., Ramsay, I. & Stapledon, G. (2010), Commercial Applications of Company Law 10th ed. Sydney, NSW: CCH
In many misfeasance cases against directors, those breaches maybe relatively uncontroversial. This draws into focus the question of whether the director has any common law or statutory defence, including the Duomatic principle and ratification by shareholders (CA 2006 S.239), available to a claim against him for restitution to the company. S.239(6)(a) preserves the Duomatic rule that if an informal unanimous consent is reached among voting shareholders, it is unnecessary to pass such ratification resolution through general meeting or written resolution. The first part will examine the scope and requirements of this rule to illustrate the validity of such assent. S.239(7) leaves the door open for rules of law, which refers to common law principles, to continue guiding ratification. It will be assessed how these rules impose limitations on the general ratification power conferred by s.239.
This paper will discuss the legislation that was enacted following these events. It is known as the Public Accounting Return and Investor Protection Act, better known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and has been enacted since the year 2002 (Mishkin, 2012, p. 158). This Act is applicable to all public companies within the US as well as any international companies who have securities within the US registered with the SEC ("The Vendor-Neutral Sarbanes-Oxley Site", 2012). In this paper, it will be discussed why Sarbanes-Oxley was enacted and the key specifications.
The law gives corporate managers a great deal of flexibility in determining their capital and governance structure, relying on the market for capital to create competition that will allow shareholders to "choose" the one they think is best.
“A proper balance of the rights of majority and minority shareholders is essential for the smooth functioning of the company.”- Explain & Illustrate? 1. Introduction:
Foss v Harbottle case was a foundation of development of derivative action that enables a minority shareholder to bring a legal action in order to recover from a wrong done to the company. Two principles, so-called Foss v Harbottle rule, were made to corporate law in related to a minority shareholder’s right. The first principle was the internal management rule preventing floodgates open to multitude actions by individual shareholders dissatisfied with operation of a company. Under the internal management rule, complaining on internal management by minority shareholders was taken by a board of directors. A decision for the complaint was also decided by the majority rule. The second principle was the proper
distribution through equity and as a liability when approved by the relevant company’s shareholders meeting.
This doctrine has been seen as a “two- edged sword,” reason being that at a general level while it was seen as a good decision in that by establishing that corporations are separate legal entities, Salomon 's case endowed the company with the entire requisite attributes with which to become the powerhouse of capitalism. At a particular level, however, it was a bad decision. By extending the benefits of incorporation to small private enterprises, Salomon 's case has promoted fraud and the evasion of legal obligations.