Shareholder
The company still has to trade on Monday.
Shareholder disputes are the ones where the cost of the fight lands on the asset both sides are fighting over. That is the whole argument for resolving them privately, and quickly, and it is why the commercial reality has to be in the room.
What comes up
The disputes.
Commercial disputes between owners of closely held businesses, including family-held ones.
- Oppression
- Conduct said to be oppressive, unfairly prejudicial, or unfairly to disregard the interests of a shareholder, creditor, director or officer.
- Deadlock
- Fifty-fifty splits and blocked boards, where the disagreement is not legal so much as structural.
- Buy-out and valuation
- What the shares are worth, on what basis, at what date — usually the real dispute once the rest is stripped away.
- Co-founder breakdowns
- Vesting, contribution, role and control disputes in businesses young enough that the paperwork was never finished.
- Partnership dissolution
- Winding up and accounts between partners, and the disputes about what the partnership agreement displaced and what it did not.
- Business succession
- Transitions between generations in family-held companies, where the shareholders are also relatives and the roles are not written down.
What this area is
Commercial disputes among family shareholders. Not family law.
"Family business" here means a company whose owners happen to be related — succession, control, buy-outs and the arguments that follow when one branch wants out and another wants to keep building. The disputes are corporate and commercial, and they are handled as such.
I do not accept family law matters. Stating it saves an intake call rather than defending anything.
The alternative
What the parties are bargaining against.
A shareholder mediation works better when both sides know what the court route actually offers.
The oppression remedy. Section 248 of the Business Corporations Act (Ontario), and section 241 of the Canada Business Corporations Act, let a complainant apply to the court where the affairs of a corporation are carried on in a manner that is oppressive or unfairly prejudicial to, or that unfairly disregards, the interests of a security holder, creditor, director or officer. Both give the court a long list of orders, including an order that the corporation or another person purchase a shareholder's securities.
And the end of the road. Both statutes also provide for the company to be wound up, or liquidated and dissolved, including on the ground that it is just and equitable, and the Ontario Partnerships Act lets a partner apply to the court to dissolve a partnership on grounds that include conduct making it not reasonably practicable to carry on business together.
One provision points the other way. The Ontario Act mentions arbitration exactly once. It provides that a unanimous shareholder agreement may provide that, where the shareholders party to it are unable to agree on or resolve a matter pertaining to the agreement, the matter may be referred to arbitration on the procedures and conditions the agreement specifies. The federal Act says nothing of the kind. So the first thing worth checking in a shareholder dispute is whether the parties already wrote down how they would resolve one.
Described so the alternatives are legible, not applied to anyone's file. Sourced in docs/reference/ontario-shareholder-remedies.md; what any of it means for a particular company is a question for each party's own counsel.
Why me
I run a company alongside this practice.
SML Company Ltd. operates alongside the practice, which means the operating consequences of a shareholder dispute are legible rather than abstract: what a deadlock does to a supplier relationship, what an information demand costs a small finance function to answer, what a stalled decision costs a business that still has to trade.
It matters in the room because shareholder disputes are usually settled on structure rather than on liability — a price, a mechanism, a timetable, a set of undertakings about how the two sides deal with each other afterwards. Getting there needs someone who can hold the corporate law and the operating reality at the same time.
The process
And how it would run.
The area is the subject matter. The process is what the parties are choosing between, and each of these describes one — the formats, the rules, and what a party is expected to do and when.
Next step
Start with a call.
Tell me the shape of the matter and who is involved, and I will tell you whether I am the right neutral for it. Inquiries are answered within two business days.