ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the way in which a company is managed and operated. One way of thinking about the way company law works is as a sort of ‘How to . . .’ manual. If you want the bene ts of limited liability, a structure for your owners to share their rights, a number of means of acquiring further capital and so on, then company law offers you a model for doing all of those things. If you obey the rules governing that model, you will receive the protection of English law. That is effectively how all private law works: the law creates models and you obtain the protection of the law if you follow the rules on creating and operating those models. Company law is one of the most complex examples of private law creating such a model.
