ABSTRACT
Section 216 applies to a person where a company has gone into insolvent liquidation131 and the person was a director or shadow director at any time in the 12 months before the liquidation. It introduces the concept of a prohibited name as a name by which the insolvent company was known in that 12 months or which is so similar as to suggest an association with that company and restricts the ability of a person to whom s 216 of the Insolvency Act 1986 applies to be involved in a company or business under a prohibited name. Unless the court has given leave or the case falls in one of the three exceptions outlined below,132 a person to whom the section applies may not for five years from the start of the liquidation be a director of or in any way involved in the promotion, formation or management of either a company or any other business known by a prohibited name. Breach is a criminal offence of strict liability.133 In R v Doring,134 the court held that it was irrelevant that the defendant had not intended to be in breach and did not consider that what she had done amounted to ‘management’, since it was sufficient that she had intended to do what she had done and that had as a matter of fact amounted to management. In Re Migration Services International Ltd,135 Neuberger J held that breach of s 216 could be taken into account in considering a subsequent application for a disqualification order.
