Commission raps Cyprus on company law, corporate governance

The European Commission has decided to pursue infringement procedures against Cyrus and four other Member States for failure to implement into national law an Internal Market Directive in the area of company law and corporate governance.
The Commission will send reasoned opinions to Cyprus, Greece, Belgium, Hungary and Italy over non-implementation of a Directive simplifying reporting requirements in case of a merger or a division.
A reasoned opinion is the second stage of the infringement procedure laid down in Article 226 of the EC Treaty. If there is no satisfactory reply within two months, the Commission may refer the matter to the European Court of Justice.
The Directive modifies the reporting requirements, by removing the obligation of drawing up an independent expert report in case of mergers or divisions if all shareholders renounce to it. The Directive was adopted in 2007, and once it is fully implemented, more than 600,000 public limited liability companies will no longer have to order costly expert reports concerning the draft terms of mergers or divisions of small enterprises. The transposition deadline for the Directive was December 2008.