United Kingdom Company Law - History

History

See also: History of company law and History of company law in the United Kingdom

Company law in its modern shape dates from the mid-19th century, however an array of business associations developed long before. In medieval times traders would do business through common law constructs, such as partnerships. Whenever people acted together with a view to profit, the law deemed that a partnership arose. Early guilds and livery companies were also often involved in the regulation of competition between traders. As England sought to build a mercantile Empire, the government created corporations under a Royal Charter or an Act of Parliament with the grant of a monopoly over a specified territory. The best known example, established in 1600, was the British East India Company. Queen Elizabeth I granted it the exclusive right to trade with all countries to the east of the Cape of Good Hope. Corporations at this time would essentially act on the government's behalf, bringing in revenue from its exploits abroad. Subsequently the Company became increasingly integrated with British military and colonial policy, just as most UK corporations were essentially dependent on the British navy's ability to control trade routes on the high seas.

"The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company. It is upon this account, that joint-stock companies for foreign trade have seldom been able to maintain the competition against private adventurers."

A Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) Book V, ch 1

A similar chartered company, the South Sea Company, was established in 1711 to trade in the Spanish South American colonies, but met with less success. The South Sea Company's monopoly rights were supposedly backed by the Treaty of Utrecht, signed in 1713 as a settlement following the War of Spanish Succession, which gave the United Kingdom an assiento to trade, and to sell slaves in the region for thirty years. In fact the Spanish remained hostile and let only one ship a year enter. Unaware of the problems, investors in the UK, enticed by company promoters' extravagant promises of profit, bought thousands of shares. By 1717, the South Sea Company was so wealthy (still having done no real business) that it assumed the public debt of the UK government. This accelerated the inflation of the share price further, as did the Royal Exchange and London Assurance Corporation Act 1719, which (possibly with the motive of protecting the South Sea Company from competition) prohibited the establishment of any companies without a Royal Charter. The share price rose so rapidly that people began buying shares merely in order to sell them at a higher price. By inflating demand this in turn led to higher share prices. The "South Sea bubble" was the first speculative bubble the country had seen, but by the end of 1720, the bubble had "burst", and the share price sank from £1000 to under £100. As bankruptcies and recriminations ricocheted through government and high society, the mood against corporations, and errant directors, was bitter. Even in 1776, Adam Smith wrote in the Wealth of Nations that mass corporate activity could not match private entrepreneurship, because people in charge of others' money would not exercise as much care as they would with their own.

The Bubble Act 1720's prohibition on establishing companies remained in force until 1825. By this point the Industrial Revolution had gathered pace, pressing for legal change to facilitate business activity. Restrictions were gradually lifted on ordinary people incorporating, though businesses such as those chronicled by Charles Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit under primitive companies legislation were often scams. Without cohesive regulation, undercapitalised ventures like the proverbial "Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company" promised no hope of success, except for richly remunerated promoters. Then in 1843, William Gladstone took chairmanship of a Parliamentary Committee on Joint Stock Companies, which led to the Joint Stock Companies Act 1844. For the first time it was possible for ordinary people through a simple registration procedure to incorporate. The advantage of establishing a company as a separate legal person was mainly administrative, as a unified entity under which the rights and duties of all investors and managers could be channeled. The most important development came through the Limited Liability Act 1855, which allowed investors to limit their liability in the event of business failure to the amount they invested in the company. These two features - a simple registration procedure and limited liability - were subsequently codified in the world's first modern company law, the Joint Stock Companies Act 1856. A series of Companies Acts up to the present Companies Act 2006 have essentially retained the same fundamental features.

Over the 20th century, companies in the UK became the dominant organisational form of economic activity, which raised concerns about how accountable those who controlled companies were to those who invested in them. The first reforms following the Great Depression, in the Companies Act 1948, ensured that directors could be removed by shareholders with a simple majority vote. In 1977, the government's Bullock Report proposed reform to allow employees to participate in selecting the board of directors, as was happening across Europe, exemplified by the German Codetermination Act 1976. However the UK never implemented the reforms, and from 1979 the debate shifted. Although making directors more accountable to employees was delayed, the Cork Report led to stiffer sanctions in the Insolvency Act 1986 and the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 against directors who negligently ran companies at a loss. Through the 1990s the focus in corporate governance turned toward internal control mechanisms, such as auditing, separation of the chief executive position from the chair, and remuneration committees as an attempt to place some check on excessive executive pay. These rules applicable to listed companies, now found in the UK Corporate Governance Code, have been complemented by principles based regulation of institutional investors' activity in company affairs. At the same time, the UK's integration in the European Union meant a steadily growing body of EU Company Law Directives and case law to harmonise company law within the internal market.