Corporate & commercial work is where most disputes are actually decided — not in a courtroom, but in a contract that was signed without reading what it failed to say. We advise companies, founders, shareholders, and directors on the arrangements that determine how a business is owned, governed, and eventually left.
Shareholders and Ownership
A shareholders’ agreement is the document that governs every disagreement that follows it: who decides what, how a departing shareholder is treated, what happens to shares on death or disability, and what a shareholder is actually paid. Those terms cannot be renegotiated at the moment a dispute arises, so they have to be right while the relationship is still friendly.
- Formation and structuring: shareholders’ agreements, joint venture terms, and investment arrangements.
- Transfer and pre-emption: restrictions on the sale of shares, rights of first refusal, and drag or tag mechanics.
- Valuation and exit: agreed valuation mechanisms, good leaver and bad leaver provisions, and buy-out formulas.
- Deadlock: escalation procedures, mediation, and last-resort mechanisms that keep a dispute from reaching litigation.
Commercial Contracts
Most business disputes are decided by what the contract did not say. We draft and review the agreements a business actually runs on — distribution and supply, agency, licensing, and confidentiality — and we negotiate them so that the exit is as deliberate as the entry.
- Drafting, review, and negotiation of commercial agreements.
- Distribution, agency, and supply arrangements.
- Service-level and outsourcing terms, including data-handling and confidentiality clauses.
- Breach notices, remedies, termination rights, and wind-down obligations.
Employment Terms for Owners and Key Staff
Directors and senior employees hold positions a standard employment contract does not anticipate. What they are owed on leaving, and what the company is exposed to, needs to be settled in writing while everyone is still at the table.
- Directors’ service contracts and share or option schemes.
- Restrictive covenants, non-solicitation, and confidentiality obligations.
- Performance, severance, and bonus entitlements.
- Settlement of a departing director’s shareholding and any competing claim.
Corporate Transactions and Disputes
When a transaction does go wrong, the remedy is usually decided by the paperwork done at the start. Where the papers are thin, we advise on what is realistically recoverable — and where negotiation is the better commercial outcome, we say so rather than litigate for its own sake.
We also represent companies and shareholders in disputes arising out of the relationship itself: a claim for an unfair dividend or a misapplication of assets, a dispute over a valuation, or proceedings to appoint or remove a director.
Why These Matters Require Specialized Representation
Corporate work rarely turns on a single question of law. It turns on the interaction of company law, the specific terms of the contract, the commercial reality behind it, and — often — the evidence of how the parties actually behaved after signing. That combination is what decides the outcome.
At Shokry Abd Ellatif Law Firm, we take the time to understand how the business actually operates before we advise on the document meant to govern it. We would rather tell a client that a term needs changing now than explain later why it cannot be fixed.
Tell us what happened. We will tell you where you stand.
The first message does not commit you to anything. It gets the file read, and it gets you an honest answer about whether we are the right firm for the matter.
010 1704 7034 · shokryaelatif@gmail.com