This Practice Note provides practical guidance on the proper execution of simple contracts and deeds by third party individuals or corporations (primarily companies incorporated under the Companies Act 2006 (CA 2006)), acting under a power of attorney. It considers who can grant a power of attorney, who can act as an attorney and execution formalities when executing simple contracts or deeds under a power of attorney.

This Practice Note does not cover the execution of powers of attorney themselves. For details, see Precedent: Power of attorney for commercial transactions.

This Practice Note does not cover the execution of documents by other authorised signatories of organisations. For more details, see Practice Note: Executing documents—deeds and simple contracts.

We have produced a toolkit that is a comprehensive, interactive resource to help users identify and work through the concepts and common issues when executing documents. Each section or phase includes practical guidance, precedent clauses and Q&As relevant to that section. For more information, see: Execution toolkit.