Piercing The Corporate Veil - United Kingdom

United Kingdom

See also: UK company law and Corporate veil in the United Kingdom

The corporate veil in UK company law is pierced very rarely. After a series of attempts by the Court of Appeal during the late 1960s and early 1970s to establish a theory of economic reality, and a doctrine of control for lifting the veil, the House of Lords reasserted an orthodox approach. On a strict reading of the most prominent recent decision of the Court of Appeal, Adams v Cape Industries plc, the only true "veil piercing" may take place when a company is set up for fraudulent purposes, or where it is established to avoid an existing obligation. The veil is also often ignored in the process of interpreting a statute, and as a matter of tort law it is open as a matter of authority that a direct duty of care may be owed by the managers of a parent company to accident victims of a subsidiary. There are also significant statements still among the judiciary in support of a broader veil lifting approach in the interests of "justice".

Read more about this topic:  Piercing The Corporate Veil

Famous quotes containing the words united and/or kingdom:

    Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.
    Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)

    ... what a family is without a steward, a ship without a pilot, a flock without a shepherd, a body without a head, the same, I think, is a kingdom without the health and safety of a good monarch.
    Elizabeth I (1533–1603)