Exit Strategy

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The legal front remains forbidding for private company minority investors who seek to secure a buyout of their ownership stake based on claims for oppression against the company’s majority owners.  It has been six years since the Texas Supreme Court eliminated a court-ordered buyout as an available remedy for minority shareholders claiming oppression, and no other legal avenue exists that provides minority owners with a buyout of their interest based on claims for mistreatment by business owners who manage the company.  See Ritchie v. Rupe.[1]  The best advice for minority investors therefore is simply this—before investing in a private business, minority owners need to insist on securing a buy-sell agreement.

We have written extensively about the terms of buy-sell agreements in previous posts (Read Here).  A buy-sell contract provides investors with the right to obtain a buyout of their minority ownership interest in the company at a future time.

No Buy—Out For Breach of Fiduciary Duty

When minority owners have claims for misconduct by majority owners, these claims most commonly include: (1) breach of contract, (2) fraud, and (3) breach of fiduciary duty.  None of these claims permit the trial court, however, to award the minority owner with the remedy of a buyout of his/her or its minority interest.  Instead, the remedy for these claims is typically the recovery of actual damages.  In the case of fraud, if the minority owner can prove that he/she was fraudulently induced to make the investment in the company, the court could rescind the transaction and require the majority owner to return the investor’s purchase price.  Instances of outright fraudulent inducement are relatively rare, however, and this will not be a claim or remedy available to most investors.  The fiduciary duty claim against the majority owner in control of the company does give rise to a potential shareholder derivative action, however, which is discussed below.
Continue Reading The Plight of Oppressed Private Company Minority Investors:  No Legal Escape Available Without a Buy-Sell Agreement in Place

Conflicts with business partners are not just a serious distraction for majority owners of private companies, these ownership disputes can be expensive, time-consuming and harmful to the long-term prospects of the business.  The start of a new year is therefore a great time for majority owners to consider whether there are steps they can take to head off disagreements with business partners. Fortunately, the answer is yes, and this post looks at New Year’s resolutions that majority owners may want to consider that will lessen or completely avoid these ownership conflicts.

The Sweat Equity Problem

The first New Year’s resolution majority owners may want to make is to decline to issue  “sweat equity” in the company.  Sweat equity refers to the grant of an ownership stake in the company to employees or outside consultants who provide services to the company, but who do not provide any financial capital for their interest in the business.  Sweat equity is granted most often by new or emerging companies that are short on cash, and they therefore issue stock rather than paying compensation for the services needed.  In other cases, owners provide sweat equity to longtime employees as part of a succession plan.
Continue Reading New Year’s Resolutions for Majority Owners: Promoting Peace With Partners in 2019

The flight attendants on commercial flights notify passengers where the exits on the plane are located. Fortunately, the vast majority of air travelers never have to put this advice to use.  In private companies, however, business partners head for the exits far more frequently as over the past decade, less than half of startup businesses survived longer than five years, and just one-third lasted for more than ten years.

Our previous post discussed steps business partners can take to avoid and resolve disputes. This post confronts the situation in which business partners conclude they cannot resolve their conflicts, and one or more of them decides to exit from the business. While breaking up can be hard to do, it should not threaten the company’s continued existence, particularly if the owners had previously negotiated and adopted a “corporate pre-nup” that will guide a partner’s departure from the business.
Continue Reading Business Partner Exits (Part 2): Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Especially When Partners Do Not Adopt an Exit Strategy