Companies Act 1948

Membership of Company.

26 Definition of member.

(1) The subscribers of the memorandum of a company shall be deemed to have agreed to become members of the company, and on its registration shall be entered as members in its register of members.

(2) Every other person who agrees to become a member of a company, and whose name is entered in its register of members, shall be a member of the company.

27 Membership of holding company.

(1) Except in the cases hereafter in this section mentioned, a body corporate cannot be a member of a company which is its holding company, and any allotment or transfer of shares in a company to its subsidiary shall be void.

(2) Nothing in this section shall apply where the subsidiary is concerned as personal representative, or where it is concerned as trustee, unless the holding company or a subsidiary thereof is beneficially interested under the trust and is not so interested only by way of security for the purposes of a transaction entered into by it in the ordinary course of a business which includes the lending of money.

(3) This section shall not prevent a subsidiary which is, at the commencement of this Act,- a member of its holding company, from continuing to be a member but, subject to the last foregoing subsection, the subsidiary shall have no right to vote at meetings of the holding company or any class of members thereof.

(4) Subject to subsection (2) of this section, subsections (1) and (3) thereof shall apply in relation to a nominee for a body corporate which is a subsidiary, as if references in the said subsections (1) and (3) to such a body corporate included references to a nominee for it.

(5) In relation to a company limited by guarantee or unlimited which is a holding company, the reference in this section to shares, whether or not it has a share capital, shall be construed as including a reference to the interest of its members as such, whatever the form of that interest.