Share buy-back rules for private companies to be liberalised?

One of the recommendation of the Nuttall Review of Employee Ownership, published in July 2012, was that the Companies Act 2006 rules on share buy-backs should be simplified, in order to make it easier for private companies to buy back shares from departing employees and to re-distribute them to new joiners or other employees.

The Government has today launched a consultation on this recommendation, as part of a wider response to the Nuttall Review.

The consultation document can be read here. The principal proposals, all of which relate to private companies limited by shares, are that: