Railways Act 1921

7 Supplementary provisions as to schemes.

(1) Every amalgamation scheme and every absorption scheme shall be so framed as to come into operation on the first day of July, nineteen hundred and twenty-three, or such earlier or later date, as the amalgamation tribunal, after consultation with the Minister, may fix:

Provided that each amalgamation scheme shall be deemed to come into operation immediately before the absorption scheme or schemes by which subsidiary companies are absorbed by the amalgamated company formed by the amalgamation scheme.

(2) Before an agreed amalgamation or absorption scheme is referred to the amalgamation tribunal, the scheme shall be submitted to the proprietors and debenture stock-holders of each constituent and subsidiary company affected thereby in the manner provided in order sixty-two of the standing orders relative to private business in the House of Commons, and that order shall apply accordingly as if the scheme were a Bill, and any statement required by the order to be deposited at the Private Bill Office shall be deposited with the amalgamation tribunal.

(3) A scheme under this Part of this Act shall, when confirmed or settled by the amalgamation tribunal, be binding on all persons and have effect as if enacted in this Act, and where any such scheme provides for the substitution of any securities of an amalgamated company for securities of a constituent or subsidiary company any trustee or other person acting in a fiduciary capacity who at the date of the amalgamation or absorption held and was entitled to hold any securities of the constituent or subsidiary company shall be entitled to hold the securities of the amalgamated company which may be substituted therefor.

(4) No stamp duty shall be payable in respect of any amalgamation or absorption scheme.

(5) Printed copies of every proposed amalgamation scheme and absorption scheme submitted to the Minister or prepared by the amalgamation tribunal in accordance with the provisions of sections two and four of this Act, respectively, shall be placed on sale at such places and at such price as the Minister may direct, and notice that such copies are on sale and the places where they may be obtained shall be published in the London and Edinburgh Gazettes, and no such scheme shall be confirmed or settled by the amalgamation tribunal until the expiration of twenty-one days after the publication of such notice.

(6) Every amalgamation and absorption scheme shall be deemed to be statutory rules within the meaning of the [56 & 57 Vict. c. 66.] Rules Publication Act, 1893; but nothing in this provision shall be construed as making any such scheme statutory rules to which section one of that Act applies.

(7) If as respects any group the amalgamation tribunal postpones the date on which the amalgamation and absorption schemes relating to the group are to come into operation to a date later than the said first day of July, then, during the period of postponement, the undertakings of all the constituent and subsidiary companies in the group may, and shall if the amalgamation tribunal so direct, be used, worked, managed, maintained and repaired as one joint undertaking, and the net receipts of the joint undertaking shall be distributed amongst the constituent and subsidiary companies upon such terms and subject to such conditions and in such proportions as may be agreed upon by the several companies with the approval of the amalgamation tribunal or in default of agreement as may be determined by the amalgamation tribunal, and the following provisions of this Act relating to amalgamated companies shall apply as if such joint undertaking were the undertaking of an amalgamated company and as if the governing body of the joint undertaking were an amalgamated company.