- Initial choice of the legal form of business among proprietorship, partnership (including limited liability partnerships) and corporation (including unlimited liability corporations)
- Incorporation and structuring
- Re-organizations of existing entities (see below for more detail)
- Equity financing and other forms of investments (including seed, angel and venture capital financing) in new or existing businesses, including due diligence
- Purchase and sale of existing businesses, including due diligence (see our Business Purchase/Sale page for further detail)
- Annual general meetings, special meetings and directors' meetings
- Directors' duties and liabilities
- Shareholders' Agreements, Partnership Agreements, Joint Venture Agreements
- Employee equity participation, incentive stock option arrangements, and employee profit sharing plans
- Annual corporate maintenance and acting as registered and records office
In particular we are often engaged to assist with complex tax-driven corporate reorganizations, often involving the implementation of a family trust as part of the structure. We often do such work on a project-specific basis, such that if you already have corporate lawyers with whom you are comfortable, but those lawyers are not versed in the type of specialized reorganization required, we will document and implement the reorganization, and then return all corporate books and records to your "normal" lawyer. You do not need to permanently change firms in order for us to advise on and/or implement such a plan.
The current economy is particularly appropriate for corporate reorganizations relating to tax-driven succession planning: the fact that both land and businesses are currently experiencing lower valuations than in the past provides an opportunity to pass value onto future generations in a particularly tax-efficient manner. This is an issue that you should discuss with your accountants; if your accountants are not versed in tax-driven reorganization planning, we can provide referrals to accountants who can assist on a transaction-specific basis, allowing you to implement such a reorganization without having to change the accountants with whom you deal regularly.
