ABSTRACT
Legislation enabling the limited liability company antedated the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board which many have called the forerunner of the nationalized industries. One discipline nationalized industry is necessarily immune from is the possibility of takeover. American experience suggests that public accountability ends up with Government’s interfering more in the detailed management of private firms in the United States than it does in the affairs of nationalized industries in Britain. Denationalization adds one additional sanction – the threat of takeover, but this is likely to be effective only for Boards small enough to be taken over. In conclusion – setting the social arguments aside – it is arguable that either making Boards go to the money market or denationalizing could be too drastic a cure and even then would have limited effects on financial discipline where there was substantial monopoly power.
