Paying back the debt [Book review]

Abstract

1997 finds Maltese company law in an interesting stage of its development. In force since January 1, 1996, the Companies Act. 1995 owes a great deal not only to local Commercial Partnerships Ordinance of 1962, but also to recently enacted UK statues, principally the Companies Act of 1985, which had its own words consolidated the "greater part of the Companies Act" then in force, and the Insolvency Act of a year later. The 1962 Ordinance had been broadly modelled on the UK Companies Act of 1948, which had itself consolidated UK company legislation to that date. For these reasons, the debt we continue to owe to our former colonial administrators in this field remains, for better or for worse, a considerable one. This book pays back part of the debt. Mr. Muscat's recent published study forms an important contribution to the development of UK company law in an area constantly in need of clarification and of new solutions to problems that keep arising in situations where a domineering parent company may be observed calling the tune to a number of satellite dependent subsidiaries. This phenomenon is hardly a new one but Dr Muscat's approach is to take a comprehensive fresh and challenging look at the subject including a detailed assessment of the current state of development of UK statute and case law. In particular he analyses the various remedies already available for the protection of third parties who may have dealt with such subsidiary and have suffered financial loss as a result of the latter's inability to settle its debts.