Legal News for UK Co-ops and Mutuals

This is a blog where brief information about developments in UK Co-op and mutual law will be reported. Readers of this blog will also find Linda Barlow's Co-operatives UK Blog at http://www.uk.coop/blogs/linda.barlow helpful. For an network of academics working on co-ops, mutuals and social enterprises visit http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/r-comuse/2012/09/welcome-to-r-comuse/

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Interested in sharing information and knowledge around legal issues for co-ops and social enterprises in the co-oplawnews blog and thoughts on random issues in the "real" blog.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Why must a Registered Society be a Co-op or Bencom?

That stalwart co-operator, formerly of Shared Interest, Mark Hayes, contacted me today with a query about how the statutory requirements (bona fide co-operative or bencom) for the registration of an industrial and provident (aka co-operative and community benefit) society came about.


That caused me to dig out an old paper of mine from 2001 which discussed the history and referred to some of the sources on that one. The key vital definition was a pragmatic addition, made only in 1939, to a law already 80 plus years old. This was done to deal with the use of societies for investment frauds because they were not subject to the same prospectus disclosure requirements as companies when issuing shares.


Here's the article in the interests of dissemination to interested lawyers and co-operators. Some of the footnotes lead in to fuller materials e.g. Hansard and key Government reports that led to the change. Sorry about the quality of the document but I had to scan it in as the Journal has not yet gone that far back with its archiving.

© Ian Snaith 2012 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Noderivs 2.0 England and Wales Licence. To view a copy of this licence visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA

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