It’s quite common for individuals running companies to appoint their spouses or partners as directors of their company, even though there is no intention that the spouse or partner should take any active role in the company’s management. Apart from anything else, there may be sound tax mitigation reasons for doing so.
Well, well. Who’d have thought it? The nation has had its say and it seems we want out of the EU. So what are the consequences for UK businesses? In the short term we are inevitably faced with a period of uncertainty.
Who are the directors of a company? At first sight that’s a pretty straightforward question to answer. Surely, you simply look at the company’s records at Companies House and there you’ll have it. But it’s not quite that easy. The law defines a director as “any person who holds the position of director, by whatever name called”.
Even companies with the most rigorous credit control procedures run the risk of incurring a bad debt should a customer fail. For smaller companies, incurring a significant bad debt can result in the end of the business itself.
Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business. That’s why it’s absolutely crucial to collect debts due from customers for goods or services sold on credit. Indeed it has been estimated that late payment is a major factor in at least 1 in 5 business failures.
Work out a budget – and stick to it. It’s all too easy to overspend at Christmas. We all want to give our loved ones the best that we can, and to be taken in by all those tempting adverts and offers.
A recent director disqualification case brought by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) shows how BIS can work with other agencies when investigating the affairs of failed companies.
A company providing a service analysing the composition of waste for local authorities across the UK, and the government’s waste and recycling agency, has ceased trading and gone into liquidation. Paul Harding and Graham Down, of tri group, have been appointed as Joint Liquidators.
Many of us remember the revulsion that we felt in 2011 when watching the BBC’s Panorama undercover investigation into the private hospital in South Gloucestershire known as Winterbourne View.