Agreement to short notice of a general meeting

General meetings of a company (in other words, members’ meetings as opposed to directors’ board meetings) require certain formalities to be complied with in order to be valid. 

Notice requirement

One of the key things to get right is giving the correct period of notice. For a general meeting, a company must give its members 14 days’ clear notice (when calculating this, the date of the meeting and the date the notice is given are excluded). Get this wrong and the meeting will be void. This period of time can be reduced by what’s known as an agreement to short notice. To do this, a shorter notice can be agreed by a majority of members entitled to attend and vote at the meeting. This majority must hold at least 90% of the voting shares.  This can be increased by the company’s articles to 95%.

Note. It may be the case that you want to speed up the process to remove a particular director and not wait at least another two weeks for the general meeting to take place. However, for a shorter notice meeting you will require a majority of the company’s members being onside to support your request.