Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 433:"Page 287, line 19, leave out ““15”” and insert ““28””" The noble Lord said: My Lords, this amendment is intended to address the concerns expressed by the noble Lords, Lord Razzall and Lord Hodgson, in Grand Committee, regarding subsection (6) of Clause 583. The concern with the current drafting of subsection (6) is that it does not give companies a sufficiently long period of time to comply with any conditions that may be attached to a resolution to redenominate a company’s share capital. Amendment No. 433 extends the period during which a company may comply with the terms of such a conditional resolution from 15 days to 28 days. This does not go as far as the respective amendments proposed by the noble Lords in Grand Committee—the noble Lords’ amendments sought an extension from 15 days to three months and 12 months respectively—but having looked at the issue again we think this is as far as we can go. In particular, we still regard it as important that there is reasonable proximity between the date of the redenomination taking effect and the relevant rate of exchange adopted for the purpose of such redenomination of share capital. In short we think that the respective periods suggested by the noble Lords were simply too long. I am however very grateful to the noble Lords for raising this issue and I trust this amendment goes some way towards allaying their concerns. I beg to move.