Re: Company law
"Unfortunately, company law usually means that, as Dabbsy so rightly points out, making a profit is the highest priority"
I think I have traced this myth back to an 1888 Irish law suit in which the directors of a company were diverting money to things outside the scope of the company Articles.
There are numerous company laws, but the important one is that directors must not allow a company to trade while insolvent. This is not the same as making, or maximising, profit. Profit is a partly theoretical matter, and if it comes at the expense of cashflow, the company can go bust while profitable on paper. Companies like Twitter also demonstrate the error in the original statement; a company may decide not to make a profit for several reasons beyond being a not-for-profit corporation; these include improving cashflow, (BlackBerry did this for some time) long term investment, restructuring, and short term expansion.
Basically if the shareholders are happy and the company is not heading for short term insolvency, that's it.
The problem in the UK has always been short term thinking except in a few companies with strategies and vision like RR.