When trading through a company with multiple shareholders or when seeking investors, shareholders often seek to reinforce their rights in the company’s articles of association by agreeing contractual arrangements in a shareholders’ or investment agreement.
Such an agreement has the advantage of being confidential to its parties as it is not, unlike articles of association, publicly available. It also usually addresses different investments and their share capital, the control and management of the company and changes to, or exit of, shareholders.
We have wide-ranging experience in advising on these agreements to protect the interests of, and properly balance the rights of, competing classes of shareholders.
As part of such arrangements we often advise on structuring different classes of share capital and generally advice on any changes that may be required to share structures through the life of a company.