• Admittedly, I speak to a lot of people who don’t know the difference between a shareholder and a director, but surely we should be able to expect that CIPC, who are the guardians of the Companies Act, would know the difference?

But no, they don’t. Here’s a pop up that you will sometimes get when you are completing a Beneficial Ownership return on the CIPC website.

They are insisting on knowing when the Directors were issued their shares!

For those of you who, like CIPC, don’t know the difference, here’s a short explanation –

The shareholders own the company and have no say in how it is run. They appoint directors to run it for them.

The directors run the company for the benefit of the shareholders.

And how about this one?

Absolute nonsense. Anyone can incorporate a company. It could be me or even one of my junior staff (if I had any) and certainly does not have to be a future Director.