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Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, these two amendments would extend the requirements for quoted companies to carry information on their websites beyond the requirements of Clauses 411 and 412. Amendment No. 212 would extend the period for which quoted companies must retain their annual accounts and reports on their website from one to five years. While that is not an onerous requirement, we consider that the length of time it is appropriate to make historic accounts and reports publicly available should be a matter for the Financial Services Authority rules rather than for company law. The transparency obligations directive, which will be implemented next year into UK law, will require the annual accounts of some issuers—including most but not all quoted companies—to be made publicly available for at least five years. Therefore, we do not need to make separate provision in the Companies Act. The new clause proposed by Amendment No. 213 would significantly extend the amount of information a quoted company would be required to publish on a website. The Bill’s new requirements in Clauses 411 and 412 for quoted companies to publish accounts and reports and preliminary results on their websites already focus on the most important financial information. The new clause would extend these requirements further to cover all communications to shareholders, prospectuses and announcements that a quoted company is obliged to make by market regulations. Again, I do not believe we should burden quoted companies with additional requirements that are properly matters for rules made by the Financial Services Authority under Part 6 of the Financial Services and Markets Act rather than for company law. On that basis, I hope the noble Baroness will feel able not to press these amendments.