What does section 172 of the UK Companies Act 2006 require of directors?

Answered byUK & Dutch Law Lookup API: article text by date, in force

Price$0.01 per article or act returned

StatusComing soon to the Store

jurisdiction UK sends the query to legislation.gov.uk. The row holds the current text of section 172 (duty to promote the success of the company) as article_text, any pending_changes not yet applied to the text, and the act's ELI and source_url. UK texts are Crown copyright under the Open Government Licence.

Tool input

{
  "query": "Companies Act 2006 s 172",
  "jurisdiction": "UK"
}

Ask it from an AI agent (MCP)

Add the Apify MCP server with this tool to your MCP client (Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ...); it signs you in with OAuth or Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>. It works once the Actor is live on the Apify Store.

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=bosco_labs/national-law-lookup

Then ask:

Use the bosco_labs/national-law-lookup tool to answer: What does section 172 of the UK Companies Act 2006 require of directors?

Call the Apify API

Runs the Actor and returns the rows in one request, billed to your Apify account ($0.01 per article or act returned). It works once the Actor is live on the Apify Store.

curl https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/bosco_labs~national-law-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "Companies Act 2006 s 172", "jurisdiction": "UK"}'

Call the Bosco Labs HTTP API

Bosco Labs HTTP API (beta, test mode): same input and rows, $0.005 per article or act returned from prepaid credits. Get a key with a $0.50 free trial.

curl https://api.boscolabs.dev/v1/national-law-lookup \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BOSCO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "Companies Act 2006 s 172", "jurisdiction": "UK"}'

UK: contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (© Crown and database right, legislation.gov.uk).

Example output

Example output from the tool's documentation (not a run of this exact question).

{
  "schema_version": "1",
  "query": "Companies Act 2006 s 172",
  "jurisdiction": "UK",
  "act_id": "ukpga/2006/46",
  "eli": "http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/2006/46",
  "title": "Companies Act 2006",
  "long_title": "An Act to reform company law and restate the greater part of the enactments relating to companies; ...",
  "act_type": "UK Public General Act",
  "act_type_code": "ukpga",
  "date_document": "2006-11-08",
  "date_publication": null,
  "official_publication": "2006 c. 46",
  "date_entry_into_force": "2007-10-01",
  "date_end_of_validity": null,
  "in_force": true,
  "act_url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/2006/46",
  "language": "EN",
  "as_of": null,
  "latest_consolidated_version_date": "2026-07-16",
  "text_version": "consolidated",
  "consolidated_version_date": "2026-07-16",
  "text_notice": "Revised (consolidated) text prepared by the legislation.gov.uk editorial team; changes listed in pending_changes are not yet applied to it. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk (The National Archives), © Crown and database right.",
  "source_url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/172",
  "data_url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/172/data.xml",
  "article": "172",
  "paragraph": null,
  "article_title": "Duty to promote the success of the company",
  "article_amended_by": [],
  "pending_changes": [],
  "article_text": "(1) A director of a company must act in the way he considers, in good faith, would be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members as a whole, and in doing so have regard (amongst other matters) to—\n(a) the likely consequences of any decision in the long term,\n(b) the interests of the company's employees,\n(c) the need to foster the company's business relationships with suppliers, customers and others,\n(d) the impact of the company's operations on the community and the environment,\n(e) the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct, and\n(f) the need to act fairly as between members of the company.\n(2) Where or to the extent that the purposes of the company consist of or include purposes other than the benefit of its members, subsection (1) has effect as if the reference to promoting the success of the company for the benefit of its members were to achieving those purposes.\n(3) The duty imposed by this section has effect subject to any enactment or rule of law requiring directors, in certain circumstances, to consider or act in the interests of creditors of the company.",
  "article_text_truncated": false,
  "warnings": [],
  "retrieved_at": "2026-11-05T22:54:33+00:00",
  "duration_seconds": 0.1
}

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