When a supplier to a marquee company was not paid for goods it had supplied, the directors told the supplier that the company was waiting for an insurance claim to be settled, after which payments would be made as usual. In reality, there was no insurance...
The Bribery Act 2010 came into force on 1 July 2011. Under Section 2 of the Act, it is an offence for a person to request, agree to receive or accept a financial or other advantage intending that, in consequence, a relevant function or activity should be...
The penalties for engaging in anti-competitive behaviour are very substantial but, recognising that cartel (price-fixing) behaviour is difficult to detect, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has a ‘leniency programme’, which operates to give...
Company liquidations have edged up in the first quarter of 2011, with 4,121 companies being subject to winding-up orders. Compulsory liquidations fell by more than 10 per cent compared with the same quarter in 2010, but creditors’ voluntary...
A recent survey of businesses carried out by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has found that, in general, the availability of finance for business from banks and other providers of external finance has eased slightly but is still...
The law relating to the fiduciary duties of directors is stricter than many company directors might think, as a recent case illustrates . The director of a company was given the loan of ‘a second-hand excavator and dumper’ for his personal use,...
A covenant can either represent a commitment to do something or a commitment not to do something. In either case, the party faced with a breach of the covenant has a range of options available to them for obtaining a legal remedy, one of which is to obtain a...
Directors of companies are entitled to any information they reasonably request about the company of which they are a director. It is therefore normal for a director to possess a great deal of confidential information about the company. Directors are also...
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has issued a consultation aimed at simplifying the licensing laws for events attended by fewer than 5,000 people. Currently, events organisers have to apply and sometimes pay for licences for events which pose...
A recent case has confirmed that a clause in a contract which absolves one party from paying the other in the event that the second party becomes insolvent is invalid as it infringes the ‘anti-deprivation’ principle. The principle exists to...
When a claim for damages is made on the basis of ‘loss of a chance’, having good quality expert evidence is essential. Most people know that it is possible to claim damages, where appropriate, for the loss of future earnings. Normally, such...
If your property has been damaged in the recent riots, you may well find that your insurance policy will not cover your losses. Most policies exclude damage resulting from 'riot', which in law, means when 12 or more people are present at the disturbance. If...
A recent case in the Court of Appeal has demonstrated that terms agreed by email can amount to a contract despite a formal contract referred to in the emails remaining unsigned. The case concerned a commodities trader and a fuel storage company that had...
The faltering steps the economy is taking towards recovery seem to be breeding a degree of overconfidence on the part of some businesses, but there is no reason to abandon good credit control practice. According to a recent report from Creditsafe, more than...
The Bribery Act 2010 comes into force today (1 July 2011). The implementation of the Act, originally scheduled for April, was delayed to allow time for the guidance on it to be finalised. Section 7 of the Act makes it an offence for a commercial...
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has the power to apply for an order banning a person from being a director in cases in which competition law is breached. Orders are granted under the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 and are issued when the...
Keeping company records up to date is not always a top priority for the directors of smaller companies. However, failing to keep the shareholders’ register up to date can have a downside if a share transfer has occurred but the new owner’s name...
It is often considered that the sorts of disclosures that a company must make to regulatory authorities or in its annual accounts are not matters that need to be given close attention. However, where the failure to disclose such information is significant,...
Bribery is coming under increasing attention following the passing of the Bribery Act 2010 , under which bribery is a criminal act. Whilst implementation of the Act, which was passed under the previous administration, has been delayed so that the Government...
European Directives on comparative advertising based on price differences have been clarified, following preliminary rulings from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in a case referred by the French commercial courts. The case was brought before the...
A survey of business confidence from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, based on the last quarter of 2010, shows a sharp decline, with confidence amongst those in the production industry having fallen more sharply than that in...
A recent case illustrates that insurers will often seek to avoid paying claims under their policies even in circumstances where they would normally be expected to be liable. The case involved a processing plant which supplied the claimant, a pet food...
When a contract contains a ‘penalty clause’ for breach of the contract, the clause will not be enforceable if it is punitive, rather than a genuine attempt to compensate the other party based on an estimate of the loss they would incur as a...
A case which recently came before the High Court demonstrates the importance of taking care over the service of documents, if only to prevent costly litigation over whether a document was validly served. In the case concerned, a construction dispute was...
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has published two draft documents, on which it has recently held a consultation, aimed at helping businesses and company directors comply with competition law. The first document, How Your Business Can Achieve Compliance ,...
'Without prejudice’ communications, made when negotiating legal disputes in order to aid agreement, are not normally admissible in court. The idea behind them is to allow the parties to explore possible areas of agreement and make suggestions and...
As part of its reform programme to save public money, whilst at the same time increasing the transparency and accountability of public bodies, the Government has announced plans to merge the Competition Commission and the competition functions of the Office...
According to a recent economic report from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, micro-businesses do not share the optimism of mid-sized businesses over growth prospects for the next two years. The survey found that only 56 per cent...
The Information Commissioner has served the first monetary penalties for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). In the first case, Hertfordshire County Council was issued with a penalty of £100,000 for two serious incidents where...
Licensees are reminded that it is now compulsory to ensure that an age verification policy is in place and that it applies to any person who appears to be under the age of 18 years. Any such person is to be required to produce, on request, identification...
One of the prime objectives of the due diligence process carried out by the prospective buyer of a business is to ensure that there are no skeletons in the cupboard of the business being bought. Warranties and indemnities are important safeguards, of course,...
With over 300,000 businesses now having made ‘time to pay’ arrangements with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the fear is that businesses that are insolvent are using such arrangements to hide their precarious financial status. With HMRC said to...
Getting into business is easy. Getting out of business is often where the real problems start. That is why it makes sense to have a partnership agreement (or a shareholders’ agreement if the business is a company) in place from day one. A...
A recent case in the High Court serves as a reminder of the importance of making sure all contracts are carefully drafted. The case was surprising, mainly because it appeared unlikely that anyone involved in the finalisation of the contract had read it...
The first charge of corporate manslaughter since the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 came into force was brought against Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings Ltd., an engineering consultancy based in Gloucestershire. The company was...
With parts of Britain colder than the North Pole, and snow covering much of the country, many employees are failing to turn up for work and, in some cases, the work is made more dangerous because of the weather. We set out below some common questions and...
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has published revised guidance on Competition Disqualification Orders (CDOs), which are orders under which company directors are disqualified from acting as directors where the company of which they are a director is in...
When you do business with someone else, it is important to agree the applicable terms and conditions – merely exchanging terms can be a recipe for dispute, as a recent case shows. The case involved a US company, which ordered goods from a British...
A director of a Staffordshire refrigeration company was recently jailed for 44 months after pleading guilty to charges of false accounting, fraud and theft. The man had been perpetrating a fraud against the company he worked for, which involved falsifying...
According to a survey by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), businesses are bullish about their prospects over the next 12 months. In its quarterly UK Business Confidence Monitor Report for the second quarter of 2010, the...
The Government is currently conducting a review of health and safety laws and practice. Lord Young of Graffham, who was a cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Government, has been appointed as Adviser to David Cameron and is overseeing a...
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has urged organisations to be extra vigilant in the way they handle personal data, after the number of reported data protection breaches reached 1,000. Anyone who processes personal information must comply...
A case concerning a company director who was disqualified from acting as a director serves as a reminder of the circumstances in which the court will reverse such a decision. It involved a man whose conduct was judged to have fallen below the standards of...
A recent case shows the importance of acting promptly when a loss due to a breach of the public procurement rules is suspected. It involved a company which had bid for a public procurement contract awarded by the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal...
A company recently failed to persuade the Court of Appeal that ‘without prejudice’ comments made by the company it was in dispute with should be admitted as evidence in court. Without prejudice material is material which is used in negotiation...
The core provisions of the Equality Act 2010 came into force on 1 October 2010. The Act replaces nine major pieces of discrimination legislation and other ancillary measures that have been introduced over the last forty years to protect people from...
Employers who use pre-employment health questionnaires should review their procedures in the light of a change being introduced on 1 October by the Equality Act 2010. Section 60 of the Act prohibits the use of such questionnaires prior to a job offer being...
Although the UK economy is slowly emerging from recession, the effects of the economic downturn have left many businesses weakened. With cuts in government spending, fears of a ‘double dip’ recession are widespread. Recent research carried out...
On 28 April, Companies House introduced a new ‘ Company Name Availability Search ’ as part of its WebCHeck service, which will return the ‘same as’ matches as defined in the Companies Act 2006 . This will allow anyone wanting to set...
It is not uncommon for a company to switch financial advisers when it is seeking to do a deal, but doing so without a full appreciation of the implications of the contract with the financial advisers who have been shown the door can be an expensive mistake. ...
When someone breaches a confidence and uses confidential information to make a profit, one of the legal remedies which may be sought is to require the person committing the breach to account for the profit made as a result. In a recent case , two...
