Australia: Shareholders

In a rare example, the Federal Court recently refused to approve a creditors' scheme of arrangement after concluding that the scheme company, Twinza Oil, had failed to discharge its onus of proving that ordinary and preference shareholders had no economic interest in the proposed scheme.

Everyone knows that, under ASIC's ‘truth in takeovers' policy, market participants are expected to abide by statements of intention made regarding a takeover or scheme of arrangement.

There are over 3 million registered companies in Australia, making them the country's most common legal structure for businesses. A large portion of these are private companies...