1st Formations

Shareholder voting rights give shareholders the power to vote on certain company decisions, such as appointing new directors and changing the company’s articles of association. How much influence any single shareholder has generally depends on the number of shares they hold and the rights attached to them. If you are setting up or running a company, your voting rights affect how much influence you have over certain company decisions.

Dreaming of starting your own business before 18? In the UK, you can do just that. Whether you want to launch a fashion line or a tech startup, you can start earning at any age – and even become a company director at 16. There are some restrictions around banking, contracts, and finance that affect under-18s. Most will need a parent or guardian involved at certain stages.

Many UK landlords are now using limited companies to buy property, especially for buy-to-let portfolios. In fact, 62% of landlords surveyed plan to set up a UK limited company for new buy-to-let purchases, according to research from 1st Formations on landlords using limited companies to buy property. Buying through a company separates your investment from your personal finances and offers potential tax advantages, but it also entails additional costs and rules.

If you’re looking for ways to control company spending or manage company expenses more effectively, the key is visibility, structure, and a few consistent habits. You can start simple and build as your finances become more complex. The important thing is making good habits part of how your business operates from the start, rather than something you retrofit later.

If you’ve stopped trading or aren’t ready to launch your business just yet, making your company dormant can be a practical way to press pause without shutting everything down. But while a dormant company is inactive, it isn’t invisible. There are still legal responsibilities to meet – and if you get them wrong, the costs can quickly outweigh the benefits.

International Women’s Day (IWD) takes place annually on 8 March. It celebrates women’s achievements and the ongoing efforts to achieve gender equality, including in entrepreneurship and business leadership. Each year, International Women’s Day has a different theme. IWD 2026 champions the theme ‘Give To Gain’. The message calls on UK small businesses and startups to support women by sharing time, space, knowledge, and opportunity.

If you’ve recently become a company director for the first time, understanding what’s expected of you can feel overwhelming – particularly when legal terms like “fiduciary duty” come up. When you become a director, you take on numerous responsibilities. Those responsibilities include ‘fiduciary’ duties, owed directly to the company.

The Fair Payment Code, formerly the Prompt Payment Code (PPC), is a UK government-backed initiative that sets out standards for businesses to pay their suppliers on time and fairly (within 30 to 60 days). Introduced in 2008, it was created to improve the UK’s payment culture and help smaller suppliers avoid debilitating payment delays.

Are you wondering if one company can have multiple businesses and whether it’s a good idea? This guide outlines how to operate multiple businesses under a single company by assigning each a trading name. Using trading names can make it easier to grow your business, allowing you to sell different products and services without taking on more administration. However, in certain circumstances, you can end up paying more tax when you expand in this way.

When thinking about starting a limited company, one of the first questions is straightforward: how much will it actually cost to set up? You may have heard that the Companies House fee is relatively low, but it can be harder to understand the wider costs involved and how different routes compare. In this blog, we examine the actual costs associated with forming a UK limited company through Companies House, a company formation agent, an accountant, or a solicitor.