Huntley Legal's Blog

There are several Bills currently going through Parliament that will have an impact on company law. This article (the first of two) tells you some of the changes you’ll need to watch out for.

If your business is facing serious financial difficulties, you need to know the potential personal implications for you and what you can do about it.

This builds on our previous article on the topic: Is your business safely solvent?

In some cases, companies tip into insolvency not simply because they owe money to their trade creditors, or sometimes even where they owe very little to trade creditors, but because they owe a significant amount to HMRC. In some cases, a company has been managing the rest of their debts by not paying HMRC. In others, once the accounts are closely examined, it seems that the company has been avoiding or evading tax liabilities.

In these times of economic malaise, you need to be sure your business is trading solvently.

This is a two-part article which starts with the consequences of insolvency to your company and its directors.

The next part will cover the tax and regulatory implications, as well your options if the company does go into insolvency.

During the long years of low interest rates, interest clauses have been neglected (to say the least).

We’re going into an environment of higher interest rates, so it’s a good time to blow the dust off and review your routine agreements with suppliers and customers. Look at your potential liabilities and take stock. Are they adequate? Or do they need to be refreshed?

Among other topics, this article includes:

• Examples of interest rates found to be too high or too low
• What the interest clause should say
• Simple and compound interest, fixed and variable rates

With the current economic dynamics and predicted rocky waters ahead, rising inflation and interest rates have also risen up the business agenda. This article explores the impact of these changes on your contractual arrangements.

A lot of businesses have supplier or client agreements that include an interest clause which applies in case of late payment.

This is called ‘default interest’ because it only becomes relevant in case of slow payers.

It’s important for your business to have a clear-eyed vision of your contractual arrangements and whether they need to be updated.

• As a supplier…
  How much do you charge your customers in case of late payment?
  
  
• As a customer…
  What is the potential cost if you are late with any payments to suppliers?

Do you provide goods, services or works to the public sector? If yes, you need to know about changes that are coming up in The Procurement Bill 2022-23 (even though the implementation date is not yet known).

This article gives some more of the statutory considerations that will affect you, and follows our previous one on the same subject: Public procurement: Regime change

For some reason, regime change has been on my mind recently. How about you?!

A new PM is not the only change on the horizon. No matter who’s in charge, there’s a change coming into how public procurement is done.

If any part of your business provides goods, services or works to the public sector, you need to be aware of the potential impact.

This article builds on my recent series of articles about key clauses you need to understand.

The “entire agreement” clause is usually found in the boilerplate text – that’s a generally quite standardised part of an agreement that is often not given a great deal of attention, even though there are no guarantees that the boilerplate clauses will be the same in each case or will be relevant to each deal.

However, it’s worth knowing what the “entire agreement” clause does and why it’s there, because you need to know if it’s appropriate and safe for the business working relationship you want your agreement to record.

Usually, the “entire agreement” clause has two parts. Let’s look at each of them in turn…

Recently, I’ve been writing about some of the key clauses typically included in commercial agreements between customers and suppliers. The links below tell you more.

This time, I focus on the commencement clause and the duration clause. People often skip lightly over these, but it’s important for you to understand them and check they work correctly for your contract.

In my view, a clause to address the Limitation of Liability is a routine part of any well-prepared agreement.

Whether you are in the role of supplier or client, you ought to care about this clause. This article will help you to understand its purpose and some of its little quirks.