Corporate Dislosure in a Substantially Unregulated Environment

Corporate disclosure in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in New South Wales was substantially unregulated. Except for banks, insurance companies, companies receiving money on deposit and, after 1896, no liability mining companies, statutes regulating companies either contained no compulsory disclosure rules or were silent about the details of information to be disclosed. In almost all cases the statutes regulating companies were based on English counterparts or had English antecedents, while the capital maintenance rule limiting profits available for dividends came from English case law. However, some English statutes, notably the life insurance legislation of 1870 and the Companies Acts of 1879, 1900 and 1907, were not adopted in New South Wales.