Boardroom and shareholder disputes can have devastating consequences for employees. Senior executives and directors must guard against disagreements between colleagues over the future direction of the company, conflicts of interest, inflated egos and failure to address poor performance issues whilst at the same time ensuring that their employer complies with its legal responsibilities.

In the context of board-level appointments and terminations our specialist employment lawyers advise on:

  • controlling the timing of an exit and any announcements (bearing in mind the obligations for listed companies)
  • designing remuneration packages for senior executives and directors
  • additional quasi-legal obligations, such as the ABI/NAPF guidelines
  • payments in lieu of notice
  • liquidated damages, contingency payments and what constitutes frustrating action
  • garden leave
  • restrictive covenants
  • ‘micklefield’ clauses (benefits automatically lost on termination of employment)
  • indemnities
  • removal of directors from office
  • limitations on listed company termination payments and severance payments

Emotional factors raise the stakes. Founders of a company with significant shareholdings usually expect their views to prevail.

Our recent experience includes:

  • advising a controlling shareholder on how to fire a director as quickly, efficiently and amicably as possible whilst contemporaneously arranging for the company to acquire for cancellation the shares of the outgoing director
  • negotiating a binding settlement agreement with a director in which he agreed to account for funds he had previously misappropriated
  • drafting a ‘without prejudice’ settlement offer letter to encourage a director and minority shareholder to resign and offer his shares for sale.

How Fox & Partners can help…

  • identifying our clients’ objectives early and implementing those objectives
  • recognising that boardroom and shareholder disputes can be particularly stressful and time-consuming, we provide timely bespoke advice and suggest practical solutions. We litigate only when it is necessary and cost-effective to do so.

Please call us on 020 7618 2400