header-logo header-logo

Home Login E-newsletter About us

NLJ this week: Corporate crime net widens

© Copyright LexisNexis 2026. All Rights Reserved.
14 November 2025
Issue: 8139 / Categories: Legal News , Commercial , Criminal , Fraud , Liability , Bribery , Company , Compliance , Risk management
printer mail-detail
235678
The Crime and Policing Bill could vastly expand corporate criminal liability through its new ‘senior manager test’, warns Tom McNeill of BCL Solicitors in NLJ this week. The sweeping test makes organisations criminally liable for offences committed by senior managers within their authority

The reform, McNeill argues, shifts corporate criminal law further towards deterrence and away from fairness or direct culpability. The test extends liability even where the company gains no benefit and lacks a 'reasonable procedures' defence.

McNeill traces the evolution from Tesco v Nattrass to today’s 'failure to prevent' model, showing how criminal fault has been replaced by assumptions of defective corporate culture. He warns that treating organisations as moral actors risks punishing compliant companies for rogue conduct.

While aimed at accountability, the new regime, he concludes, prioritises ease of prosecution over principled justice.

Issue: 8139 / Categories: Legal News , Commercial , Criminal , Fraud , Liability , Bribery , Company , Compliance , Risk management
printer mail-details
RELATED ARTICLES
 

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Read All
Sponsored by
Red Lion Chambers—Maurice MacSweeney

Red Lion Chambers—Maurice MacSweeney

Set creates new client and business development role amid growth

Kingsley Napley—Tim Lowles

Kingsley Napley—Tim Lowles

Sports disputes practice launchedwith partner appointment

mfg Solicitors—Tom Evans

mfg Solicitors—Tom Evans

Tax and succession planning offering expands with returning partner

NEWS
Read All
Who’s on the 2026 silk list?
The rank of King’s Counsel (KC) has been awarded to 96 barristers, and no solicitors, in the latest silk round
NLJ this week: When your brain signs the contract
Neurotechnology is poised to transform contract law—and unsettle it. Writing in NLJ this week, Harry Lambert, barrister at Outer Temple Chambers and founder of the Centre for Neurotechnology & Law, and Dr Michelle Sharpe, barrister at the Victorian Bar, explore how brain–computer interfaces could both prove and undermine consent
NLJ this week: Comparators—how close is close enough?
Comparators remain the fault line of discrimination law. In this week's NLJ, Anjali Malik, partner at Bellevue Law, and Mukhtiar Singh, barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, review a bumper year of appellate guidance clarifying how tribunals should approach ‘actual’ and ‘evidential’ comparators. A new six-stage framework stresses a simple starting point: identify the treatment first
NLJ this week: Domicile—more than where you live
In cross-border divorces, domicile can decide everything. In NLJ this week, Jennifer Headon, legal director and head of international family, Isobel Inkley, solicitor, and Fiona Collins, trainee solicitor, all at Birketts LLP, unpack a Court of Appeal ruling that re-centres nuance in jurisdiction disputes. The court held that once a domicile of choice is established, the burden lies on the party asserting its loss
NLJ this week: Arbitration’s fast lane—with guardrails
Early determination is no longer a novelty in arbitration. In NLJ this week, Gustavo Moser, arbitration specialist lawyer at Lexis+, charts the global embrace of summary disposal powers, now embedded in the Arbitration Act 1996 and mirrored worldwide. Tribunals may swiftly dismiss claims with ‘no real prospect of succeeding’, but only if fairness is preserved
Copyright © 2026 LexisNexis
back-to-top-scroll