§ Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
§ Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Earl of Granard.)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.
§ House in Committee accordingly.
§ [The EARL OF DONOUGHMORE in the Chair.]
§ Clause 1:
§ Amendment of the law relating to private companies.
§
1.—(1) Where the articles of a company include the provisions which, by section one hundred and twenty-one of the Companies (Consolidation) Act, 1908, as amended by this Act, are required to be included therein in order to constitute the company a private company for the purposes of that Act, and default is made in complying with any of those provisions, the company shall cease to be entitled to the privileges and exemptions conferred on private companies under the following provisions of that Act mentioned in the Schedule to this Act:
Provided that the court, on being satisfied that the failure to comply with the conditions was accidental or due to inadvertence or to some other sufficient cause, or that on other grounds it is just and equitable to grant relief, may, on the application of the company or any other person interested and on such terms and conditions as seem to the court just and expedient, order that the company be relieved from such consequences as aforesaid.
§
(2) In subsection (1) of the said section one hundred and twenty-one of the Companies (Consolidation) Act, 1908, for paragraph (b) the following paragraph shall be substituted:—
(b) limits the number of its members (exclusive of persons who are in the employment of the company and of persons who having been formerly in the employment of the company, were while in such employment and have continued after the determination of such employment to be members of the company) to fifty; and
§ (3) Every private company shall send with the annual list of members and summary required to be sent under section twenty six of the Companies (Consolidation) Act, 1908, a certificate signed by a director that the company has not since the date of the last return, or in the case of a first return since the date of the incorporation of the company, issued any invitation to the public to subscribe for any shares or debentures of the company; and where the list of members discloses the fact that the number of members of the company exceeds fifty, also a certificate so signed that such excess consists wholly of persons who under section one hundred and twenty one of that Act, as amended by this section, are to be excluded in reckoning the number of fifty.
§ THE EARL OF GRANARDThe first is a purely drafting Amendment.
§
Amendment moved—
Clause 1, page 1, line 12, leave out ("following").—(The Earl of Granard.)
§ On Question, Amendment agreed to.
§ THE EARL OF GRANARD moved to add at the end of the first paragraph of subsection (1) the words in his Amendment.
§
Amendment moved—
Clause 1, page 1, line 13, after ("Act") insert ("and thereupon the said provisions shall apply to the company as if it were not a private company").—(The Earl of Granard.)
§ On Question, Amendment agreed to.
§ THE EARL OF GRANARDThe next Amendment is in subsection (3), and its object is to enable a certificate showing that the company has not infringed the private company provisions to be signed by the secretary of the company or by a director.
§
Amendment moved—
Clause 1, page 2, line 9, after ("director") insert ("or the secretary").—(The Earl of Granard.)
§ On Question, Amendment agreed to.
§ Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
§ Remaining clause agreed to.
§ Schedule: