Corporate disputes

A corporate dispute rarely begins in court. It is usually the end point of a long conflict between partners: unapproved transactions, blocked decisions, attempts to strip assets or dilute a stake. By the time the matter reaches court, the parties’ positions are normally firmly entrenched.

We handle disputes at any stage, from pre-trial negotiations and interim measures to court proceedings and enforcement of the judgment. First of all, we get to grips with the real structure of the conflict, not only the formal claims.

A practical question often has to be solved in parallel with the corporate dispute: how to keep the company’s operations running while the proceedings are under way. We run both tracks at once. We prepare the position for court and make sure the opponent cannot block the bank account, shipments or access to day-to-day management through parallel claims. If the conflict is rooted in asset stripping, we separately work on freezing orders and interim measures over the property itself, not only over the stake in the company.

Letting the conflict drag on without documenting breaches. Participants build up mutual claims verbally for years without recording breaches in writing, and when the matter reaches court they can prove neither the timing nor the breach itself, because of carelessly drawn-up minutes and correspondence.

Relying on informal arrangements with a partner. Founders rely for years on oral agreements about roles and profit, and when the relationship deteriorates it turns out that the articles of association and the shareholders’ agreement do not reflect those arrangements at all, leaving nothing formal to protect their interests.

Ignoring the risk of subsidiary liability. A director keeps taking decisions at the height of a corporate conflict without assessing that, if the company becomes bankrupt, those decisions may be recharacterised as grounds for their personal subsidiary liability.