contract-law england-and-wales
What could be meant by a document purporting to be signed &quot;For&quot; a company?
<p>A contract indicates that it is signed &quot;<code>For and on Behalf of [ACME Limited]</code>.&quot;</p>
<p>The notion of being signed &quot;on behalf of&quot; seems to be invoking the notion of <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/43" rel="nofollow noreferrer">S43(1)(b), Companies Act 2006</a>. However, what possible legal provisions or legal doctrines might the word(s) &quot;For and&quot; be trying to invoke, and what other purpose could they possibly serve apart from what is already achieved by &quot;on Behalf of&quot;?</p>
<p>In other words, what is the difference between signing &quot;for&quot; a company and signing &quot;on behalf of it,&quot; and what is the difference between something being signed &quot;for and on behalf of,&quot; and something being signed merely &quot;on behalf of,&quot; a given company?</p>

<h2>In other words, what is the difference between signing &quot;for&quot; a company and signing &quot;on behalf of it&quot;?</h2>
<p><strong>Nothing.</strong></p>
<p>Companies are famously illiterate - they can't read or write and need someone with fingers to do it for them. In fact, everything that a company does is done through an agent.</p>
<p>There is no difference between a document signed &quot;for&quot; a company, &quot;on behalf of&quot; a company, &quot;for and on behalf of&quot; a company, or one that's just signed. Modern usage is far less formal than it used to be and what you are seeing here is a holdover from a time when people used to put rhetorical flourishes on legal documents for no good reason: <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=for+and+on+behalf+of&amp;year_start=1800&amp;year_end=2019&amp;corpus=26&amp;smoothing=3#" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=for+and+on+behalf+of&amp;year_start=1800&amp;year_end=2019&amp;corpus=26&amp;smoothing=3#</a></p>

<p>They (&quot;for&quot; and &quot;on behalf of&quot;) are essentially synonyms (&quot;on behalf of&quot; is even one of the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/for" rel="nofollow noreferrer">definitions</a> give for &quot;for&quot; in Merriam-Webster). You could make the argument that &quot;for&quot; indicates the beneficiary or &quot;in the interest of&quot;, and &quot;on behalf of&quot; the principal or &quot;as if the principal is acting&quot;. And indeed, there are cases where only one of these expressions fit.</p>
<p>But for this specific phrase, it does not matter if  &quot;for&quot; is included or not in most modern jurisdictions. The usual interpretation rules have moved away from the scrutiny of exact words, unless an ambiguity clearly exist. Of course, many legal document writers still use redundant wordings whether for tradition, clarity, or other reasons (e.g. easier to find and rely on case laws). There is a whole Wikipedia article on what is called &quot;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet" rel="nofollow noreferrer">legal doublets</a>&quot; (e.g. null and void, cease and desist, heirs and successors).</p>
