The rights a shareholder holds against the company, how those rights are exercised through meetings and resolutions, and the remedies available when they are infringed.
Shareholder power runs through the whole life of a company, from the day a member joins the register to the day relations break down. This chapter starts with how membership arises and where rights come from — the statutory contract created by the articles and how it differs from a shareholders' agreement — before examining the rights that attach to shares themselves, including class rights and the distribution of surplus assets on a winding up. It then works through the machinery of shareholder voice: notice and voting at general meetings, members' powers to requisition meetings and pass written resolutions, entitlement to dividends and statutory pre-emption rights, and the approvals needed to remove a director, sanction substantial property transactions or vary class rights. It closes with what a shareholder can do when things go wrong, through unfair prejudice petitions, derivative claims and just and equitable winding up.
