Course Details

When advising director/shareholders of profitable private companies on the best way(s) to extract money from their companies each year, a distribution by way of dividend is often an attractive option – but dividends are only lawful if there are sufficient distributable profits, and the proper company law procedures have been followed.

If you get it wrong, it can mean legal liabilities for the shareholder and/or the directors who approved the payment – and a string of cases show how unsympathetic the courts can be if you try to re-categorise a payment as something else later on. This webinar will help you ensure your clients dividends are all lawful and effective - first time, every time.

In this webinar session, David Impey will cover the following:

  • Is it actually a distribution/dividend? Latest developments in and out of the courts
  • Company law essentials for dividends
  • Legal consequences of unlawful dividends
  • Dividend case law review, including re-categorising payments and dividend policies
  • Interim dividends and dividends based on interim accounts – what’s new?
  • Particular problem areas – and solutions


By attending this session you will be better equipped to identify when a private company client is making a distribution (which isn’t always straightforward), ensure they have sufficient distributable profits to do so, and advise them of the company law steps they must follow to keep the distribution/dividend lawful, while avoiding common pitfalls and problems.

CPD Course Speaker

Company Law Solicitor

David Impey

David Impey is a company law solicitor, professional services marketer, writer, and lecturer. His specialities include company law, professional services marketing, strategic planning and implementation, and interactive e-marketing.

As well as specialising in company law, David also works with law firms and other law businesses, helping them with strategy, and marketing, and majoring particularly on overcoming barriers to implementation of strategic and marketing plans and tactics

From 2008 to 2014, he led and worked on a major project for the UK Intellectual Property Office, through Atom Content Marketing (formerly BHP), building and developing an online IP HealthCheck resource that helps small and medium-sized businesses to identify, protect and commercially exploit their intellectual property.

He also worked in-house for 14 fun and profitable years for leading services provider Jordans, becoming Marketing Director responsible for developing, managing and marketing its service and product range. Particularly, he led significant projects to commoditise UK and overseas ‘factory’ professional services and promote them into the UK and other legal markets.

David lectures in the UK and overseas on both UK company law and professional services firm strategy and marketing.