 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Companies Act 1929" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(September 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Act of Parliament | |
.svg) | |
| Long title | An Act to consolidate the Companies Acts, 1908 to 1928, and certain other enactments connected with the said Acts. |
|---|---|
| Citation | 19 & 20 Geo. 5. c. 23 |
| Territorial extent | [b] |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 10 May 1929 |
| Commencement | 1 November 1929 |
| Repealed | 1 July 1948 |
| Other legislation | |
| Repeals/revokes | |
| Amended by | Companies Act 1947 |
| Repealed by | Companies Act 1948 |
Status: Repealed | |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
TheCompanies Act 1929 (19 & 20 Geo. 5. c. 23) was anact of theParliament of the United Kingdom, which regulatedUK company law. Its descendant is theCompanies Act 2006.
TheReport of the Company Law Amendment Committee (1926) Cmnd 2657, known as the Report of the Greene Committee was aUK company law report led byWilfred Greene M.R. that led to the Companies Act 1929.
which has become common in recent years goes even farther and exempts directors in every case except that of actual dishonesty.’
The Report recommended increasing disclosure through common standards on accounts.
Under the present law there is no direct statutory obligation on a company to keep proper accounts. We consider that the law should be altered so as to make the keeping of such accounts compulsory. In the case of companies it is for obvious reasons impossible to specify with any elaboration the accounts to be kept, and our recommendation goes as far in this direction as we consider to be practicable. Experience shows that in many instances, particularly in the case of private companies, accounts are not properly kept, with the result that when liquidation ensues the company's books are found to be so defective and confused that it is impossible to find out what has become of goods and money belonging to it.There can be no doubt that default of this kind is often deliberate, and we consider that heavy penalties should be imposed with imprisonment when the default is wilful.
Forms made under the 1929 act introduced the term "Companies Court", referring to the High Court, Chancery Division, when exercising its jurisdiction for company law matters (Re Tasbian Ltd (No 2) [1990] BCC 322, 324).
Section 77(1) authorised the court in a compulsory winding up to direct the liquidator either to prosecute the offender himself or to refer the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions. If it appeared to the liquidator in a voluntary winding up that any past or present director, manager or other officer of the company had been guilty of an offence in relation to the company for which he was criminally liable, section 77(2) required him to report the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions. It also required the liquidator to give the Director of Public Prosecutions information and access to documents in his possession or under his control. If the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to bring proceedings against the offender, the liquidator could do so himself though only with the leave of the court. This was a safeguard against the company's assets being wasted on frivolous or vexatious proceedings.
The whole act was repealed by section 459 of, and the seventeenth schedule to, theCompanies Act 1948 (11 & 12 Geo. 6. c. 38).
