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Corporate Killing Clause Funnily enough, Mark Thomas doesn’t get to speak to company Chief Executives all that often. For some reason, they tend to avoid him. However, he was actually invited to go and visit Mike Welton, the Chief Executive of Balfour Beatty.Mark asked him what he thought of the government proposals for corporate killing, percentage fines and Directors Duties. Mike Welton agreed that an offence of corporate killing was due but that a clever accountant could still pay directors their bonuses even if they were fined. He was less than happy with the suggestion of Director’s Duties though, because this would create an undesirable “blame culture”.
This sentiment was echoed in a confidential survey by the British Safety Council, where one anonymous “Leader of Industry” said:
If Mark wanted to visit other companies’ offices, he would have to do some lateral thinking. Fortunately, he stumbled across a weird bit of legislation called The Companies (Inspection and Copying of Registers, Indices and Documents) Regulations 1991 Link to The Companies (Inspection and Copying of Registers, Indices and Documents) Regulations 1991
This law states that any shareholder of a company can visit the companies’ registered office for two hours between 9am and 5pm on each business day, to inspect various documents, including the Directors’ Service Contracts! Armed with his nifty new law and a single share, Mark set about visiting construction companies’ offices and inspecting the directors’ contracts.
In order to encourage construction company directors to sign up to their duties Mark inserted a ready-made Corporate Killing clause into their service contracts.
"In the event of an employee being seriously or fatally injured, due to non-compliance with any of the above, I am happy to go to prison if convicted." Although George Wimpey did tell us that their directors signed their own Health, Safety and Environmental Policy Statement, surprisingly, none of the companies have signed up to our corporate killing clause just yet.
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