ABSTRACT
If the registered company is to achieve its full potential as an effective vehicle for investment in business and industry, it is of considerable importance to ensure that there are appropriate mechanisms and procedures in place to enable an investor/shareholder who believes that his investment is being illegitimately jeopardised by the conduct of the persons running the company to remove his investment altogether, to prevent the conduct or recover property which properly belongs to the company. The fact that the English registered company thrived for so long without any such effective shareholder remedy is not proof that none was necessary but simply that the interests of the controllers of companies, in the sense of both directors and majority shareholders, were seen as being of a higher priority than the interests of smaller, passive investors.
