The Issues Of Companies Act Of 2006

Many believe that liability is a biggest issue in a general partnership than in a sole proprietorship. The owners of the company are still fully liable for any debts the company may accrue as well as the liability for any lawsuits that may be brought against the company. However, the bigger issue in a partnership is that now each partner can be liable for the other partner’s actions. If one partner is sued for malpractice, the other partner may suffer because of it.

This essay will explain the concepts of separate personality and limited liability and their significance in company law. The principle of separate personality is defined in the Companies Act 2006(CA) ; “subscribers to the memorandum, together with such other persons as may from time to time become members of the company are a body corporate by the name contained in memorandum.” This essentially means that a company is a separate legal personality to its members and therefore can itself be sued and enter into contracts. This theory was birthed into company law through the case of Salomon v Salomon and Co LTD 1872. This case involved a company entering liquidation and the unsecured creditors not being able to claim assets to compensate them. The issue in this case was whether Mr Salomon owed the money or the company did. In the end, the House of Lords held that the company was not an agent of Mr Salomon and so the debts were that of the company thus creating the “corporate Veil” .

This paper describes the impact of the decision made in the case of Tesco Stores Ltd v Brent LBC on the law and its effects on the corporate world, and the comparison between the doctrine of vicarious liability that it outlines and the doctrine of identification that was used earlier to determine the liability of corporations in cooperate crime.

* Limited Liability - Unlike partnerships and sole proprietorships, corporate shareholders are not liable for any of the corporation's debts.

Lipton, P. & Herzberg, A. (2010). Understanding Company Law. (15th ed.). Pyrmont, NSW: Lawbook Co.

As discussed earlier in the chapter, one of the primary reasons to organize a business as a corporation or as a limited liability company (LLC) is to protect the personal assets of the principals. As a general rule of corporate law, which has been a part of the U.S. legal system for over two centuries, the principals of a corporation are not personally liable for a corporation’s debts and obligations. In other words, a corporation’s principals are generally immune from personal liability for the decisions they make and the actions they undertake on behalf of a corporation. For example, assume that Corporation A contracts with Corporation B to purchase equipment valued at $500,000. If Corporation A fails to pay Corporation B for the equipment it purchased, the principals of Corporation A are not personally liable to Corporation B. Rather, Corporation A, the party in privity of contract with Corporation B, remains liable for the liability it incurred. A so-called “corporate veil” protects the principals of Corporation A, which insulates them from legal actions taken by Corporation B to

Birds J., Boyle A.J., MacNeil I., McCormack G., Twigg-Flesner C., and Villiers C. Boyles & Birds’ Company Law (5th Ed.). Bristol: Jordan Publishing Limited. 2004.

For the purposes of this assignment the relevant law is the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (either as the “Act” of the “CA”). From now on I will refer to it as the Act (Hinchy, McDermott 2008).

o Weakness: there is a societal imbalance in the distribution of resources, and it is virtually impossible for courts/legislatures to make important decisions that do not make someone worse off

There can be a number of reasons for a company to go public or private. There are benefits, as well as disadvantages that go along with either course of action (Exhibit 1 for details). When firms decide to go private, they are no longer listed on any stock exchange market. The pressure of keeping accounting regularity and reporting to the public is no longer an issue. Instead, firms can be more flexible to reorganize the business profile as well as the management team. In many cases, shareholders and board members receive very rewarding financial benefits from this transaction. However, in some situations, public firms do not have a choice in the matter, as is the case in a “hostile takeover”.

The Centro director’s penalty case took place in the early months of 2007 after Centro Properties Group and Centro Retail Group closed its financial books owing to the end of a fiscal year (Kershaw, 2012). Their 2007 annual reports concealed the whereabouts of 1.5 billion dollars in short-term liabilities while asserting that they were non-current liabilities. The company also did not reveal guarantees of short-term liabilities of an associated company in the range of 1.75 billion dollars. The company did not also reveal the whereabouts of another 500 million US dollars that it categorized as non-current.

The concept of a company being a separate legal entity is the most striking illustration in separating the company from its owners. A paramount principle of corporate law is that no shareholder or member of a company is made liable for the obligations incurred by such incorporations A company is different from its members in the eyes of law. In continuations to this the opposite also holds true in the sense that neither can the company be held liable for the acts of its members. It is a fundamental distinction that a company is distinct from its members.

There is no clear framework of the rules that would cover the contingencies of a ruling to pierce the corporate veil Idoport Pty Ltd v National Australia Bank Ltd. The corporate Veil usually protects owners and shareholders from being held liable for corporate duties. Yet again a decision made by the court to lift that veil and would place the liability on shareholders, owners, administrators, executives and officers of the company without ownership interest. The purpose of this essay is to conduct an analysis on the concept of lifting the corporate veil and to review the different views on its fairness and equitability to present a better understanding of the notion, the methods used was throughout researching the numerous scholars views on the subject, case law and statutes examples, and the evidence provided by the empirical study of Ramsay & Noakes. When we discuss the lifting the corporate veil the first case that pops out is the case of Salomon V A. Salomon & Co Ltd, since the decisions of applying the corporate veil were first formed as a consequence of this case. The idea covers all of company law and distinguishes that a company is a separate legal entity from its members and directors. Furthermore, spencer (2012); have indicated that one of the core principles that followed the decision in Salomon v Salomon was the wide acceptance one man company’s. However In order to form a

Barriers to Collaboration: A Review on the Impact of Companies Act 2006 [Type the document subtitle] [Pick the date] [Type the company name] pc   Table of Contents 1 Chapter 1: Introduction 4 1.1 Background to Study 4 1.2 Purpose of the Research 5 1.3 Research Aims and Objectives 6 1.4 Research Questions 6 1.5 Research Hypothesis 6 2 Chapter 2: Research Methodology 7 2.1 Introduction 7 2.2 Research Philosophy 7 2.3 Justification for choice of research philosophy– interpretivism 8 2.4 Research Approach 8 2.4.1 Deductive Approach – choice of research approach and justification 9 2.4.2 Mixed methods research 10 2.5 Research Design 10 2.6 Data Collection and Analysis 11 2.7 Sample size, method of data collection and justification 11 2.8 Ethical Issues 11 2.9 Validity and Reliability 12 2.10 Time Horizon 12 3 Chapter 3 - Literature Review 14 3.1 Introduction 14 3.2 The Company Act 2006 14 3.3 Shareholder Disputes 15 3.4 Informal Company Management 17 3.5 Barriers in Supply Chain Civil Industry 17 3.6 Collaborative Working and Conceptual Background 21 3.7 Managing Collaboratively 23 3.8 Main Contractor – Subcontractor Conflicts in Work Relationship 25 4 Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Interpretation 30 4.1 Quantitative Analysis 30 4.1.1 Shareholders’ Collaboration 30 4.1.2 Barriers to Shareholders’ Collaboration 32 4.1.3 Supply Chain collaboration 35 4.2 Comparison with Amendments made in Companies Act of India 48 4.3 Special Focus on Collaboration among Construction Companies 50

Corporation origin from the Latin word Corpus which means body. It is formed by a group of people and has separate rights and liability from those individual. In any means, corporation exists independently from its owner and this principle is called the doctrine of separate personality. Doctrine of separate personality is the basic and fundamental principle in a Company Law. This principle outline the legal relationship between company and its members. Company’s assets belong to the company not the shareholders as assets are the equity for creditors. Company must use up all its assets to pay off the creditors if it became insolvent. The same applies to the corporation’s debts. For limited liabilities company, the shareholder liability is limited which means that the shareholder is restricted to the number of shares they paid and not personally liable for the corporation’s debts. If the company does not have enough equity to pay off debts, the creditors cannot come after the shareholders. However, limited liability company can be very powerful when in hands who do fraud and on defeating creditors’ claims. Courts then can ignore the doctrine for exception cases and lifting the corporate veil. Lifting the corporate veil is a situation where courts put aside limited liability and hold a corporation’s shareholders or directors personally liable for the corporation’s debts.