Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "Companies act no. 71 of 2008"

The Companies Act 71 of 2008 has introduced into our company law an innovative provision which permits a wide range of persons to apply to court to declare a director delinquent. This provision is contained in section 162 of the Companies Act 71 of 2008. The effect of an order of delinquency is that a person is disqualified for a specified period from being a director of a company. In Gihwala v Grancy Property Limited [2016] ZASCA 35 the Supreme Court of Appeal was faced with some important questions surrounding the declaration of delinquency of a director. It was contended by the appellants that section 162(5)(c) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 is unconstitutional on the grounds that it was retrospective in its application, and that there was no discretion vested in a court to refuse to make a delinquency order or to moderate the period of such order to less than seven years. It was further contended that section 162(5)(c) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 infringed the constitutional right to dignity, the right to choose a trade, occupation or profession and the right of access to courts. In assessing these contentions, the SCA addressed and clarified some important questions surrounding the declaration of delinquency of a director. This note discusses and analyses the judgment of the SCA. It points out some anomalies in section 162 of the Companies Act 71 of 2008. This note contends that, in assessing the rationality of section 162(5) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008, the SCA ought to have considered the equivalent provisions in leading foreign jurisdictions that have influenced our Act, particularly since section 5(2) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 permits a court where appropriate to consider foreign law in interpreting the Act. Further, this note analyses the test applied by courts in determining whether the offences set out in section 162(5) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 have been committed, and argues that the courts ought to make more effective use of their power to impose ancillary conditions to declarations of delinquency.

With the entering into force of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 in 2011 a number of rights were granted to trade unions by the act. The Companies Act 71 of 2008 not only grants rights to registered trade unions, as is the case in labour law, but in some cases it grants rights to trade unions representing employees at the workplace. It is argued that rights afforded to trade unions by the act ought to be granted only to trade unions that are registered in terms of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995. In addition, it is also argued that the Companies Act 71 of 2008 ought in principle to differentiate between rights that are granted to registered trade unions representing employees at the workplace and rights that are granted to registered majority trade unions, or at the least to sufficiently representative trade unions.

Section 58(1) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 gives a shareholder the right to appoint a proxy "at any time" for the purpose of participating in, speaking and voting on behalf of that shareholder at a shareholders′ meeting, or providing or withholding written consent on behalf of the shareholder in terms of section 60. One important issue that arises in regard to the appointment of a proxy relates to the proper interpretation of section 58(1) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008, namely whether this section, as read with section 58(3)(c), constitutes an unalterable provision giving a shareholder an unlimited right to appoint a proxy "at any time" before the proxy exercises the shareholder's rights at the shareholders meeting, or whether the time period within which the instrument of a proxy′s appointment must be delivered to the company may be restricted by the MOI. This issue was considered by the SCA in the Richard Du Plessis Barry case in view of the appellant′s contention that the provisions of the MOI that limited the time period within which the instrument appointing a proxy must be delivered to the company, or other person on behalf of the company, were valid. In this note, I examine the Richard Du Plessis Barry case with a focus on the proper interpretation of the right of a shareholder to appoint a proxy "at any time" as conferred by section 58(1) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008. I provide some critical comments on the main issues that this judgement raises, including the interpretation of section 58(1) in the context of "alterable" and "unalterable" provisions of the Companies Act 71 of 2008, a purposive interpretation of section 58(1), the interaction between section 58(1) and section 58(3)(c), the significance of the difference in the wording of section 58(1) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 and section 189 of the previous Companies Act 61 of 1973, as well as the practical implications of the court's decision in this matter. This is followed by a brief comparative analysis with selected international jurisdictions and some concluding remarks.

The Companies Act 71 of 2008 (the 2008 Act) replaced the Companies Act No. 61 of 1973, effective 1 May 2011. The 2008 Act was aimed at keeping pace with developments in company law internationally. It is not intended to entirely replace the well-established principles and has largely retained the pre-existing South African company law. The mergers and acquisitions provisions are aimed at creating transparent, efficient, and simple procedures. Different types of mergers and acquisitions are clearly defined as “affected transactions” or “offers” in section 117. Section 118 provides for companies to which the provisions apply. The reasons for regulating these transactions and powers of the regulator – The Takeover Regulation Panel, have been reviewed, clarified, and improved. The previous section on disposal of all or greater part of assets or undertaking of a company has been re-written. The 2008 Act further introduces a new type of affected transaction in section 113, in the form of a “merger” or an “amalgamation.” The 2008 Act has retained the scheme of arrangement in section 114, but has changed its format by removing compulsory court application and approval. The courts get involved under certain prescribed circumstances. The 2008 Act has enhanced shareholder protection for fundamental transactions in the form of section 164 – Appraisal Rights and section 115, dealing with shareholder approval of fundamental transactions. Some scholars and practitioners have criticised certain provisions. However, in general, the provisions have received favourable commentary. They regarded as progressive and comparable with others internationally.

AbstractA director may serve a company in more than one capacity. In his capacity as a shareholder, a director may hold voting rights in the company. One consideration regarding the removal of a director from office is their removal by shareholders in circumstances where the directors are themselves shareholders in the company and hold weighted votes. This article appraises whether, under the South African Companies Act 71 of 2008, a shareholding-director who holds shares with weighted votes would validly and lawfully be able to block his removal from office by the company's shareholders. This article makes suggestions regarding the use of weighted votes to block the removal of directors from office, and calls for an important amendment to the South African Companies Act 71 of 2008 to prevent weighted votes being used as a device to block the removal of directors from office.

This paper seeks to critically analyse the requirements of the duty imposed on directors to act for a proper purpose as provided in section 76(3)(a) of the 2008 Act (Companies Act 71 of 2008) whenever they distribute company money and/or property. This analysis is conducted with the obligations imposed under sections 4 and 46 of the 2008 Act in mind. The purpose is not to question the inclusion of this duty in the 2008 Act. It is simply to question whether the common law interpretation of the duty still suffices in the face of section 76(3) of the 2008 Act, which seems to suggest that a different standard of judgment must be used. The argument that is made here is that the use of common law principles in interpreting proper purpose is well and good when the actions of directors are challenged based on the common law, but, where this duty has been incorporated into statutory law the interpretation of the duty in the context of the wording of the statute should be paramount. In addition, when interpreting any provision of the Act, consideration of the objects of the statute becomes inevitable. The interpretation of the duty cannot, in the face of the changes brought about by the statute, remain stagnant as a result of reliance on common law standards of judgment. The wording of the provision in question and the purpose of the statute cannot and must not be ignored; they must be given effect. A comparative approach will be adopted, using legislation and case law from Australia and Canada. The selection of these particular jurisdictions is based solely on the fact that like South Africa, their legal heritage is based on English common law, and a comparison of the three jurisdictions therefore makes sense.

A significant innovation of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 is contained in section 162. This provision empowers a court to declare a director delinquent or under probation on various grounds. The effect of a delinquency order is that a person is disqualified from being a director of a company, while being placed under probation means that he or she may not serve as a director except to the extent permitted by the order. A delinquency order may be unconditional and subsist for the director's lifetime, or it may be conditional and be effective for seven years or longer, as determined by the court. A probation order generally subsists for a period not exceeding five years, and may be subject to such conditions as the court considers appropriate. The harsh effects of these orders are alleviated by section 162(11) of the Companies Act. Under this provision, a delinquent director may apply to court after three years have elapsed, to suspend the delinquency order and to substitute it with a probation order, with or without conditions. A person who was placed under a probation order may apply to court after two years for the probation order to be set aside. This article examines the procedure under section 162(11) of the Companies Act for the suspension and setting aside of delinquency and probation orders. The factors that a court must take into account in exercising its discretion whether or not to grant the application, as set out in section 162(12) of the Companies Act, are also examined. This article draws on relevant jurisprudence as decided on the equivalent provisions in the corporate legislation in the United Kingdom and Australia. The method of interpretation used in these jurisdictions provides useful guidance on how best to apply and interpret sections 162(11) and (12) of the Companies Act. Recommendations are made regarding the proper approach to interpreting, applying and enhancing sections 162(11) and (12) of the Companies Act.

This article focuses on an Australian piece of legislation and interesting case law, as well as how the Federal Court of Australia has applied Australia’s Corporations Act 2001, to characterise a person as a de facto director – that is, as a professed director whose appointment as such was defective. In this regard, the decisions of that Court will, as envisaged in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996, constitute persuasive authority. The Australian decision to be discussed in this article is significant in that the South African Companies Act 71 of 2008 does not contain substantively similar provisions to those of Australia’s Corporations Act 2001. For example, section 66(7) of the Companies Act 2008, contains the phrase “entitled to serve” as a director. This article explains the legal implications relevant to that expression, including whether it imposes a statutory condition precedent. This article also considers the validity of decisions taken by a person who is not “entitled to serve” as a director.

Given the intention of section 7(a) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 (the Act) to promote compliance with the Bill of Rights in the interpretation and application of company law in SA, this article assesses the extent to which the Act actually does this. The article thus seeks to showcase evidence of the Act's intentional alignment with the normative framework of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (the Constitution). The paper does this by answering the question: what are the implications of the Constitution's normative framework on the interpretation and application of the Act? The term "normative framework" is defined, and a distinction is drawn between the descriptive and explanatory social science research questions and the legal research questions which are evaluative and normative in nature. The article provides examples of the contexts in which the intentional alignment of the Act with the Constitution's normative framework is evident. To this extent, commentary is made on the following selected issues: remedies to facilitate the realisation and enjoyment of rights established by company law; the direct and indirect horizontal application of the Bill of Rights to provisions of the Act; and a discernible court's duty to develop the common law as necessary to improve the realisation of the rights established by the Act. A point is made in the article that judicial decisions involving the application of company law must be justified by reference to a cohesive set of values from the Bill of Rights. This is part of transformative constitutionalism. It demands that even commercial law principles should no longer be blindly accepted simply because precedent says so, or for the reason that it is expedient for the purposes of commercial certainty. The article argues that the Act permits the direct horizontal application of the Bill of Rights on its provisions in two stated ways. It is also argued that the Act permits the indirect application of the Bill of Rights through the development of the common law where it is deficient in promoting the spirit, purport and objects of the Bill of Rights. The development of the common law, it is argued, is vital for producing an incremental and cohesive body of constitutionalised common law in the company law context.

This article discusses how foreign companies doing business in South Africa during periods of financial distress and registered locally as external companies are, as a recent High Court decision confirms, denied the formal debt-relief measures of business rescue and therefore a compromise with creditors because of being excluded by the definition of “company” in the Companies Act 71 of 2008. Nor, for the same reason, may these companies, if solvent, rely on the current liquidation procedures. But they may possibly use the procedure preserved in the otherwise repealed Companies Act 61 of 1973 for liquidation as far as the transitional arrangements in the Companies Act 71 of 2008 allow. The purposive solution suggested in this article for the interplay between the two Acts may need legislative attention. This article surveys other possibilities relevant to these companies such as informal voluntary arrangements, applications for winding-up, ordinary debt collection, and perhaps compulsory sequestration applications. Finally, it raises the policy issue for the legislature to consider why these companies should be denied business rescue and/or a compromise with their creditors when these formal debtrelief measures might help them survive their financial stress and emerge stronger, to the advantage of themselves, their creditors, their stakeholders and communities, and the entire nation. It is submitted that these issues could and should be considered as part of the current law reform process of South African insolvency law.

Magister Legum - LLM (Mercantile and Labour Law)
A company forms an important part of a community in which it conducts business. It, therefore, has a direct impact on the economic and thus the social well-being of that community through its employees, suppliers and distributors. Consequently, the failure of a company has a large effect on society than merely its employees and creditors. In some instances this may lead to companies being liquidated. Granting an order of liquidation, results in the demise of the corporate entity and the attendant loss of jobs. This is further protracted by an unsatisfactory pro rata share in the residue for unsecured creditors, and the abandonment of claims when such are not proved. Having a corporate rescue procedure in place can prevent or even limit the amount of job losses, or provide an alternative measure as opposed to liquidation of companies. Corporate rescue affords a company a second chance, after having once failed, to restructure its financial affairs and once again become a successful concern.

Recently, the South African Legislature partially codified the common law duties of directors with the Companies Act, 71 of 2008 (hereafter referred to as „the 2008 Companies Act‟) which came into effect on 1st May 2011. Chapter 2 of the 2008 Companies Act is dedicated to the formation, administration and dissolution of companies. „Part F‟ thereof elaborately provides for governance of companies, and section 76 contained therein requires directors and other company office bearers to meet the standards of directors‟ conduct as prescribed therein. All of these duties are in accordance with the principles of common law as indicated in section 77 subsection (2) (a) where non-compliance will attract legislated liabilities as provided for in section 77 of the 2008 Companies Act. While the standards of directors‟ conduct remains within the bounds of common law, what impact will this codification have on South Africa‟s corporate law? And what are the realities of its enforcement?
Dissertation LLM--University of Pretoria, 2012.
hb2014
Mercantile Law
unrestricted

Includes bibliographical references.
The Companies Act 61 of 1973 (the "1973 Act") will be repealed in its entirety when the Companies Act 71 of 2008 (the "2008 Act") comes into operation on a date still to be fixed by the President of the Republic of South Africa, in proclamation. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate what impact, if any, the 2008 Act will have on the remedies afforded to members or shareholders in companies to protect their rights in the event of so-called "oppressive or unfairly prejudicial conduct" by majority decision, or otherwise, in a company.

The Companies Amendment Act 37 of 1999 brought about a major change to the South African company law, the Amendment Act introduced share buyback provisions to our company law. The legislature had finally responded to numerous calls for amendments to our company law, particularly amendments that would make share buyback by a company of its own shares and share buyback by subsidiary company of shares in its holding company possible. The Amendment Act operated in a statutory scheme to which the capital maintenance doctrine was applicable, it was thus necessary that the Companies Act 61 of 1973 be overhauled and this was done through the enactment of the Companies Act 71 of 2008. On 1st May 2011, the Companies Act 71 of 2008 finally came into effect. This study is principally about the provisions governing a company’s acquisition of securities in terms of the new Companies Act. I will first give an exposition of the evolution of our Companies Act from capital maintenance to solvency and liquidity. I will then contrast the share buyback provisions of the 1973 Companies Act with the current Companies Act, I will also discuss and analyse the provision governing distributions in general and those pertaining to acquisition of securities in terms of section 48 of the Companies Act 71 of 2008.
Mini Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2014.
tm2015
Mercantile Law
LLM
Unrestricted

This chapter analyzes the 2000s, which for public companies and the executives who ran them was akin to “the decade from hell.” The stock market performed poorly, the number of public companies declined substantially, and scandals in the early 2000s and the financial crisis of 2008 greatly eroded confidence in big business. A deregulatory trend that began in the late 1970s was reversed, epitomized by the enactment of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002. A casualty of the bad news for public companies was the imperial-style CEO who featured prominently as the 1990s drew to a close. Those running banks nevertheless enjoyed a corporate governance “free pass” in the mid-2000s that arguably contributed to the onset of the financial crisis.

This chapter discusses the law on creditor claims in South Africa, where bankruptcy proceedings in are governed by the Insolvency Act and the 1973 Companies Act, while reorganization in business rescue proceedings is regulated under the 2008 Companies Act. Liquidation and business rescue each has its own approach to the submission, verification, and admission of claims; the scope of creditor participation; the calculation of voting rights; the realization of secured assets; and the range of preferential creditors. So it is unsurprising that creditors may prefer one procedure over the other irrespective of the debtor’s financial prospects. South African law does not provide for super-priority claims. In both bankruptcy and reorganization proceedings, administration expenses always rank first. The chapter examines insolvency claims, administration claims, and non-enforceable claims in turn. Each section covers: the definition and scope of the claim; rules for submission, verification, and satisfaction or admission of claims; ranking of claims; and voting and other participation rights in insolvency proceedings.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

Under CA 2006, s 19 the Secretary of State has power to prescribe standard form articles of association for companies and different model articles may be prescribed for different descriptions of companies. Provision is made for private companies limited by shares, private companies limited by guarantee and public companies. They are contained in Schedules 1 to 3 of the Companies (Model Articles) Regulations 2008. It is not compulsory for companies to adopt all or any of the provisions that are contained in the model articles, and in certain situations there is much to be said for having articles that are drafted to meet the particular requirements of individual companies.

Every country has provided business recuse system and a regime for the protection of insolvent debtors. South Africa has had this legal infrastructure since 1926 when the statutory procedure of judicial management was introduced by the Companies Act 1926. The chapter discusses the judicial management, mechanisms to secure unpaid debts, carrying on business during insolvency, and the new corporate rescue procedures applicable for South African companies as provided in Companies Act 2008. The chapter also puts a light on corporate insolvency informs in South Africa.

The Corporations Act of 2001 regulated the probable insolvency proceedings of all companies incorporated in Australia and companies incorporated or possessing separate legal. For personal insolvency, a specific legislation called Bankruptcy Act is there, but the basic framework of corporate insolvency law has been there since the inception of Corporations Act 2001 enactment, which includes all the aspects of company formation, management, governance, and dissolution. The authors have highlighted recent reforms; however, the main concentration of this chapter is on the legal infrastructure of corporate insolvency law at present as the reforms are not yet in force. The chapter also puts forth the problems faced by corporate debtor and creditors in the proceedings of insolvency resolution and has also expressed the scenario of cross-border insolvency in Australia in light of UNICTRAL Model law of cross-border insolvency which has been adopted by the Australian government in 2008.

The real estate crash in the Global North in 2008, accompanied by the growth of a comparatively stable real estate market in India, saw a number of architects and allied companies from the Global North enter India’s National Capital Region (NCR). Indian state actors and developers, as well as corporations from the Global North, propagated a discourse of the global in order to generate economic and cultural capital for their work. The discourse operated through and embedded into the built environment and material landscapes of NCR. This paper argues that elite cultures in India need to be understood as an entanglement of local governing and corporate elite with foreign elite actors. It further argues that material environments act as sites through which both local and international groups contest, claim, and reframe the elite identities in India, intimately tying together the global and the elite. Material worlds are integral to understanding the dynamics of elite interactions in the Global North and Global South as they cross language barriers, disseminate knowledge sensorially, and constitute the foci of multinational capitalist intervention in developing countries. This paper is part of a cross-class ethnography of the building construction industry in NCR.

This chapter describes the 2009 study findings in a series of annual studies that the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in Ontario and TELUS, one of Canada’s major Telecommunications companies, are committed to undertake to develop a better understanding of the state of IT Security in Canada and its relevance to other jurisdictions, including the United States. This 2009 study was based on a pre-test involving nine focus groups conducted across Canada with over 50 participants. As a result of sound marketing of the 2009 survey and the critical need for these study results, the authors focus on how 500 Canadian organizations with over 100 employees are faring in effectively coping with network breaches. In 2009, as in their 2008 study version, the research team found that organizations maintain that they have an ongoing commitment to IT Security Best Practices. However, with the 2009 financial crisis in North America and elsewhere, the threat appears to be amplified, both from outside the organization and from within. Study implications regarding the USA PATRIOT Act are discussed at the end of this chapter.

The advances in wireless communication and the Internet are leading to an ever-more-global economy and unprecedented changes in business processes. Such a highly competitive global market demands that engineering companies must consider the entire product lifecycle and take advantages of different regions of the world by collaboration between groups based in different geographic locations. The experiences of collaborative enterprises have shown up many issues of communication and information sharing between separate teams or different users at different stages of a product lifecycle. This paper proposes a new strategy to strengthen information sharing among users and partners through the whole product lifecycle. The proposed method utilizes a CAD model to act as a centre-carrier to link the information generated by different users, especially at later stages of the product lifecycle, no matter which formats of the product (i.e., the original CAD model or its derived lightweight representations) the users own. The method provides further support in sharing and retrieving relevant information directly via the CAD model.

The need for financial transparency is way beyond reducing fluctuations on financial markets, the protection of small investors or fighting against money laundering. Asian crisis in 1997, Dot-com bubble in 2000, company crises such as Enron and the global financial crisis in 2008 have shown that a crisis caused by the lack of transparency in companies might not only affect the company and its stakeholders in a negative way but also the country and the region the company is in. After the financial crisis of 2008 many countries made various arrangements in capital accounts about increasing transparency and accountability which was seen as one of the reason of the crisis in addition the short and long term precautions. Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which came into force in the United States in July 2010 is one of the most significant arrangements. In this study, practices of increasing transparency in capital markets after global financial crisis have been discussed. In this context, in light of the new regulations and the Corporate Governance Principles, transparency and disclosure practices in Turkey have been examined. The results of these practices have been analyzed in the short term and its possible effects on capital markets, companies and shareholders have been discussed in the long term. Increasing transparency has been expected to help financial markets process more effectively and to provide benefits to all stakeholders.