CHAPTER XXIII
STATUTORY COMPANIES
THE name ‘Statutory Companies’ is frequently used to
describe that large and important class of companies which
are incorporated by special Acts of Parliament for certain
specific purposes. The objects of these companies are to
work undertakings of a public nature, such as are calculated
to be of benefit to the public at large, or to a section of the
public; and whilst there is also the intention to make profits
for the shareholders in these undertakings, yet so largely are
the public interested in the proper working of them, that the
legislature has assumed the right to restrict and limit their
powers and to impose upon them conditions intended to be
for the general welfare of the community, to whom the proper
working of these undertakings is a matter of grave concern.

Among the companies of this class are railway companies,
gas companies, water companies, dock and harbour companies
and many others; in fact, it is not too much to assert that
the companies in question are, from the public point of view,
the most important in existence, and some of them are per-
haps also the largest commercial undertakings in the country.

As stated above, each of this class of companies owes its Special Act.
existence to a special Act of Parliament whereby its powers
are carefully defined. It is, as Bowen, L.J., has said, ‘a
simple statutory creature,’ and in this respect it resembles
a company incorporated under the Companies Acts. ‘It
is made up of persons who can act within certain limits,
but, in order to ascertain what are the limits, we must look
to the statute. The corporation cannot go beyond the
statute.’

In the case of a company incorporated under the Com-
panies Acts, the memorandum of association, together with
the Companies Act, 1929, must be looked at to ascertain its
powers. In the case of a statutory company its special Act
must alone be looked at. And whilst in the case of a company
incorporated under the Companies Acts its articles of associa-
tion must be examined in order to ascertain by what regula-
tions it is governed, in the case of a statutory company its
special Act expressly or by reference contains also its code of
reculations.