Company Law Bill [HL]

I was slightly surprised when the Minister said that, even if there are ““procedural irregularities””—I think that that was the phrase that he used—this reduction of capital should still be capable of going ahead. That seems to be quite a big proviso, so to speak. I would have thought it rather important that there were no procedural irregularities. To pin this on the fact that, if there was no solvency statement, the directors would run the risk of shareholders vetoing or turning down the resolution seems to place an enormous weight on the shareholders, many of whom may have a fairly passive view on what is going on. I think that this is important. We have listened carefully to what the Minister said. I accept that we will not take the matter further this afternoon, but we may well want to come back to it later. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.