Ex Northampton Chairman arrested

Lord Biro wrote:

The whole original concept of the Limited Company is now discredited beyond hope. What used to be a half serviceable idea is nothing more than a scam opportunity. Football clubs are perfect with their dumb customer base, where years of future performance under a different legal entity are stolen by the current directors.

Of course the legal entity that accrues debts must be responsible for them, but these vehicles no longer have any touchable capitalisation worth a spit. The mad leverage without sufficient REAL commited and vulnerable equity is the problem, and the law should be changed. But it won't be.
Just another part of a bankrupt culture. God bless the co-op and it's divi. Community at it's best.

You're not wrong except in that without LL it would not be possible to generate large amounts of working capitol, risk taking would become a thing of the past, maybe that would be a good thing but we should be using two tin cans and a piece of string rather than I-Phones.

Not all us lefties are as painted and the limited liability thing was one of my points and I fully understand it has allowed people to take risk without losing their shirt. That was a good thing, and it has been universally praised from right AND left, when appropriate. It still could be a good thing. But, the practice in the real world has changed.
And to suggest no investment would happen without private money is frankly ludicrous. The utilities, the NHS, the Royal Mail, the huge housing investments of the 20th century, the road network, I could go on for ever. The private sector just gives us baubles and bangles, where a pretty penny can be turned. Even the early internet was hugely subsidised by public money, and publicly owned companies.

And the utilities, especially the railways,  only get privatised for a few decades when there is a technology premium to be had, and then they jump ship, and it's back to the public ownership for the next trenche of good stewardship and renewal. The private sector these days has a problem with the the return that it thinks it should get from it's capital invested ( usually diddly in many many cases, especially football ). It has become bloated, and there has been too much capital created out there for the work that needs doing. It's bound to come crashing down. And the biggest problem is "ethical capitalism" has all but disappeared, it's eating itself, and has done since globalisation and the electronic markets big bang. They're bewitched by easy money, saw what Nick Leeson did, and legalised the concept of deception.

As for company law, which I studied a long time ago, there still is the safeguard of "lifting the corporate veil" ( of ownership ), but it is not done nearly enough. In this case Northampton will get what they deserve hopefully, just as Argyle's owners should have got what they deserved, but they got away with long term loan notes, and they will be coming knocking. It's that sort of ruse that gives ordinary private business a bad name with so many of us citizens. That 3m quid Argyle owe them should have been lost, it should have been equity to pay creditors.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-35403724
Inside out East will be worth a watch on iplayer.