• Determining the valuation of a shareholding.
• Addressing the company’s financial management.

As the economy’s growth rate slows, financial pressures on companies of all sizes are increasing. A harsher economic climate tends to lead to increased scrutiny by shareholders of company performance and one consequence may be an increase in disputes between shareholders. Such disputes may be protracted and emotive: they may also be complex in cases where the same shareholders control a group of companies.

This article outlines the causes of disputes and the remedies available to shareholders together with the valuation and investigation work which will need to be undertaken to enable the available remedies to be effective.

Causes of disputes

Shareholder disputes may arise for a variety of reasons. Individual shareholders or groups of shareholders may feel that they have insufficient influence over the direction of the company. Alternatively, there may be irreconcilable differences between the aims of specific shareholders: for example, a shareholder/director in a family company may want to retire from the management