Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

I thank the noble Lord for that question and, in particular, for raising the point about Amendment No. A5. In relation to that amendment, the words ““is presumed to be”” are important as they indicate that this is a presumption that may be rebutted. I am not sure that I picked up the detail of the point that the noble Lord was raising. If not, I shall look at it and come back to him. Regarding the specific point about the emergence of pre-IPOs, as he referred to them, one has to look at the provisions in the Bill. There is a prohibition on public offers by a private company where they are, among other things, allotting, or agreeing to allot, any securities of the company with a view to their being offered to the public. One would have to work through the detail of any circumstance and I know that we shall be testing the meaning of a number of these provisions in due course before one can give a definitive answer. It would depend upon the facts of any given situation. Clearly there is no problem if the company is a PLC and one would normally assume that such arrangements would be in relation to a public company. If that were the case, there would be an assurance that these provisions would not bite—but we are going to examine the detail of that in subsequent amendments. On Question, amendment agreed to. [Amendments Nos. A2 to A5 not moved.]