Facts
Mr Boardman was the solicitor of a family trust. The trust assets include a 27% holding in a company (a textile company with factories in Coventry, Nuneaton and in Australia through a subsidiary). Boardman was concerned about the accounts of the company, and thought that to protect the trust a majority shareholding is required. He and a beneficiary, Tom Phipps, went to a shareholders' general meeting of the company. They realised together that they could turn the company around. They suggested to a trustee (Mr Fox) that it would be desirable to acquire a majority shareholding, but Fox said it was completely out of the question for the trustees to do so. With the knowledge of the trustees, Boardman and Phipps decided to purchase the shares themselves. They bought a majority stake. But they did not obtain the fully informed consent of all the beneficiaries. By capitalizing some of the assets, the company made a distribution of capital without reducing the values of the shares. The trust benefited by this distribution £47,000, while Boardman and Phipps made £75,000. But then John Phipps, another beneficiary, sued for their profits, alleging a conflict of interest.
Read more about this topic: Boardman V Phipps
Famous quotes containing the word facts:
“Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Birth, and copulation, and death.
That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks:
Birth, and copulation, and death.
I’ve been born, and once is enough.
You dont remember, but I remember,
Once is enough.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“These facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is everywhere active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool; and whatever opposes that will is everywhere balked and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)