United Kingdom Company Law - Corporate Finance

Corporate Finance

While corporate governance primarily concerns the general relative rights and duties of shareholders, employees and directors in terms of administration and accountability, corporate finance concerns how the monetary or capital stake of shareholders and creditors are mediated, given the risk that the business may fail and become insolvent. Companies can fund their operations either through debt (i.e. loans) or equity (i.e. shares). In return for loans, typically from a bank, companies will often be required by contract to give their creditors a security interest over the company's assets, so that in the event of insolvency, the creditor may take the secured asset. The Insolvency Act 1986 limits powerful creditors ability to sweep up all company assets as security, particularly through a floating charge, in favour of vulnerable creditors, such as employees or consumers. If money is raised by offering shares, the shareholders' relations are determined as a group by the provisions under the constitution. The law requires disclosure of all material facts in promotions, and prospectuses. Company constitutions typically require that existing shareholders have a pre-emption right, to buy newly issued shares before outside shareholders and thus avoid their stake and control becoming diluted. Actual rights, however, are determined by ordinary principles of construction of the company constitution. A host of rules exist to ensure that the company's capital (i.e. the amount that shareholders paid in when they bought their shares) is maintained for the benefit of creditors. Money is typically distributed to shareholders through dividends as the reward for investment. These should only come out of profits, or surpluses beyond the capital account. If companies pay out money to shareholders which in effect is a dividend "disguised" as something else, directors will be liable for repayment. Companies may, however, reduce their capital to a lower figure if directors of private companies warrant solvency, or courts approve a public company's reduction. Because a company buying back shares from shareholders in itself, or taking back redeemable shares, has the same effect as a reduction of capital, similar transparency and procedural requirements need to be fulfilled. Public companies are also precluded from giving financial assistance for purchase of their shares, for example through a leveraged buyout, unless the company is delisted and or taken private. Finally, in order to protect investors from being placed at an unfair disadvantage, people inside a company are under a strict duty to not trade on any information that could affect a company's share price for their own benefit.