Latest News within Exiting a Business

The courts recently ruled that when the directors of a company involved that company in fraudulent transactions, the company was not barred from making claims against the directors and their accessories for the losses caused by the directors’ breach of fiduciary duty.

Banner Jones help X-Cel Superturn acquire Colson Industries in £1.75m deal.

Sheffield-based X-Cel Superturn (GB) Ltd, which manufactures precision engineered components for the oil and gas sector, has acquired fellow Yorkshire business Colson Industries in a £1.75 million deal.

X-Cel Superturn was founded in 1984 by current Managing Director Andrew Taylor as Sheffield Superturn to manufacture small to medium CNC machined parts. The company has expanded through a combination of organic growth and acquisition and this year expects to grow turnover from £24 million to £30 million, independent of the Colson acquisition. It employs 130 people across its sites in Sheffield, Rotherham and Batley.

X-Cel Superturn plans to quadruple sales at Colson Industries, from £2.5 million to £10 million over the next two years, adding 25 employees over the period to bring staff numbers up to 65. Colson Industries will now act as a 100% subsidiary of X-Cel Superturn.

If an employer is ‘proposing to dismiss as redundant’ 20 or more employees at one establishment, within a period of 90 days, the collective consultation provisions of Section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULRCA), whereby the employer must consult with ‘appropriate representatives’ of the affected employees, come into play. Where there is no recognised independent trade union representation, nor existing employee representatives authorised to act on the employees’ behalf, representatives must be elected by the affected employees. Where the employer fails to comply with these provisions, the Employment Tribunal (ET) can require the payment of a protective award.

The director of a company who decided to defend his company himself against a copyright infringement claim has found that failing to take legal advice early on in the proceedings has cost his company dear.

The company had reproduced more than 100 articles from a commercial vendor of such material on its own website, representing the content as having been written by people connected with the company

The importance of making full disclosure of relevant facts when negotiating is hard to over-emphasise, as a recent case shows.

The case arose when a company made an agreement to sell a subsidiary to another company. As is normally the case when a business is offered for sale, a pre-sale memorandum was prepared, outlining key information about the company being sold, and this was circulated to potential buyers.