Part 27: Mergers and Divisions of Public Companies
1168.The provisions of this Part enable a public company – under certain conditions – to apply to the court for an order under Part 26 sanctioning an arrangement or reconstruction which concerns the merger or division of a public company. They implement the Third Council Directive 78/855/EEC concerning mergers of public limited liability companies and the Sixth Council Directive 82/891/EEC concerning the division of public limited liability companies.
1169.The provisions of this Part restate section 427A and Schedule 15B to the 1985 Act. The opportunity has been taken to put the provisions in a form more closely corresponding to that of the Directives. Chapters 2 and 3 deal separately with mergers and divisions and the provisions within those Chapters broadly follow the order of the provisions of the relevant Directive.
1170.The independence requirements for experts and valuers in sections 936 and 937 are new and correspond to the new independence requirements for a statutory auditor (see section 1214). They include a new power for the Secretary of State to define a disallowed connection for the purposes of determining whether a person is sufficiently independent to be an expert or valuer under this Part. This is consistent with the approach taken in sections 344 and 1151 of the Act.
