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Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

Yes, I shall consider carefully what the noble and learned Lord has said, and I am grateful for his explanation. As I understand it—and I am looking slightly to my left—squeeze-out works on a class-by-class basis. So in the present situation, a company with convertible preference shares, unconverted, would have to obtain 90 per cent of that class of shares to obtain the power to squeeze out. This seems to agglomerate all the securities that could be convertible, which is the point that I made in my opening remarks. In other words, you would take ordinary shares, convertible preference shares and convertible loan stock and say, ““Has that all been converted and what does the pile look like?””—and 90 per cent gets you squeeze-out. That is not what you currently have; you would have to have 90 per cent of each of those classes, I think. Unless the noble and learned Lord wants to leap to his feet and say that I have completely misunderstood what he was saying, I shall withdraw the amendment—but I may wish to come back to it, having reflected further externally.