Our expertise in shareholder and partnership disputes

Stewarts has extensive experience in representing shareholders, members, directors, and companies (ranging from small privately-owned companies through to PLCs) in business disputes, and in representing partners and LLPs in partnership disputes.

Our lawyers combine technical expertise with the commercial awareness that is critical in resolving corporate and partnership disputes.

Our shareholders experience

• Pursuing unfair prejudice petitions pursuant to ss.994-996 of the Companies Act 2006
• Acting on behalf of shareholders against other shareholders pursuant to joint venture agreements
• Acting on behalf of shareholders to enforce their rights to purchase or sell shares under: sale and purchase agreements; put and call option agreements; and compulsory good and bad leaver clauses in companies’ Articles of Association or shareholder agreements
• Acting on behalf of shareholders and companies to enforce their rights in business sale agreements
• Acting on behalf of shareholders to pursue breach of warranty claims
• Bringing derivative actions on behalf of companies against directors and other companies

Our experience with directors and companies

• Pursuing and defending breach of fiduciary duty claims against directors
• Director misfeasance claims
• Acting on behalf of directors in defending disqualification proceedings
• Acting on behalf of companies in professional negligence and fraud claims against auditors

Our experience in traditional partnership disputes

• Advising partners (and in the case of LLPs, members) on managing resignations from their firms following a partnership dispute
• Advising on issues arising out of the dissolution of partnerships including related partnership disputes about property and profit entitlements.

Recent cases our lawyers have worked on

• Acting for minority shareholders in a Companies Act claim in respect of the shareholdings in a leading City equities broker
• Acting for the majority shareholders in a large private software company in a claim against the minority shareholders, arising out of the alleged minority shareholders’ diversion of the company’s assets to other entities
• Acting for the majority shareholders in a private management consultancy company in their claim against the minority shareholder to compel her to comply with ‘bad leaver’ provisions in the Articles of Association to sell her shares to the majority shareholders
• Acting for a well-known London market insurance broker in a dispute between the shareholders relating to the compulsory acquisition of shares
• Acting for a billionaire in seeking to stop an attempt by the Joint Administrators of her deceased husband’s estate to appoint receivers over a major corporate entity in the group of companies she controlled