AGLC4 Rule 2.1.2: Business Corporations and Firms

Where a party is a company or firm, shorten the standard corporate words using the fixed forms in the table, and shorten other corporate status words, including foreign ones, by convention. Leave out trading names, trading as phrases and former names. An ACN is normally omitted unless it is the only identifier available.

AGLC4 page 40

Formatting

  • Corporate abbreviations sit inside the italic case name and are therefore italic.
  • No full stop follows any corporate abbreviation or status word, domestic or foreign (Co, Ltd, Pty, Inc, GmbH, plc, SA).
  • The word and inside a business name becomes an ampersand; the v between parties is unaffected, and the names of statutory bodies that are not businesses keep and.
  • Insolvency and appointment status phrases keep their round brackets, are lower case and are abbreviated as in the table, for example in liq and rec apptd.
  • Foreign corporate designations are kept in their conventional short form and capitalisation.
  • A trading as or t/as phrase, any trading name and any former company name are omitted.
  • A leading The that forms part of a company's name is retained, unlike the rule for government parties.
  • An ACN, when it must be used as the name, is written as a run of digits with no spaces or commas (rule 1.10.1).

Examples

Quoted from the Guide, page 40
  1. 4
    Andrew Shelton & Co Pty Ltd v Alpha Healthcare Ltd (2002) 5 VR 577.
  2. 5
    Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v TPG Internet Pty Ltd (2013) 250 CLR 640.
  3. 6
    Lumbers v W Cook Builders Pty Ltd (in liq) (2008) 232 CLR 635. [Not: … Pty Ltd (in liquidation) …]
  4. 7
    Olivaylle Pty Ltd v Flottweg GmbH & Co KGaA [No 3] (2008) 76 IPR 152.
  5. 8
    The Mond Staffordshire Refining Co Ltd v Harem (1929) 41 CLR 475. [Not: Mond Staffordshire Refining Co Ltd v Harem trading as ‘Mulsol’ Laboratories …]

Not

Quoted from the Guide, page 40
  • [Not: … Pty Ltd (in liquidation) …]
    the insolvency status is written out instead of using the table abbreviation
  • [Not: Mond Staffordshire Refining Co Ltd v Harem trading as ‘Mulsol’ Laboratories …]
    the leading The of the company name is dropped and a trading name is added

Forms in the rule

Quoted from the Guide, page 40
  • ‘GmbH’, ‘AG’, ‘plc’, ‘SA’, ‘Sarl’
  • ‘Trading as’ or ‘t/as’

Standard abbreviations for words in the names of business corporations and firms

Quoted from the Guide, page 40
WordAbbreviation
and&
CompanyCo
LimitedLtd
ProprietaryPty
IncorporatedInc
(in liquidation)(in liq)
(in provisional liquidation)(in prov liq)
(administrator appointed)(admin apptd)
(manager appointed)(mgr apptd)
(receiver appointed)(rec apptd)

See also

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Formats, examples, passages, tables and the forms marked Not are quoted from the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th ed, Melbourne University Law Review Association, 2018), with the page of the Guide they appear on. Titles, summaries and explanations are our own.