ABSTRACT
The Company Law Review was set up in 1998 by Margaret Beckett, the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, to devise a framework of company law which ‘facilitates enterprise and promotes transparency and fair dealing’.2 Its terms of reference invited it, among other things, to identify a set of provisions that would support the creation of wealth, while at the same time protecting the interests of those involved with the company, including shareholders, creditors, and employees.3 The most fundamental task that faced the Review in meeting this challenge was to determine the objective or objectives in accordance with which companies should be run, and correspondingly the range and priority of interests that company law should seek to further. In the words of the consultation documents issued by the Review, the aim was to establish the proper ‘scope’ of company law.
