Shareholder Disputes, Distributions & Dividends - Live At Your Desk - Learn Live

Introduction

This virtual classroom session is aimed primarily at corporate litigation lawyers, particularly those dealing with shareholder disputes and insolvency.

With the prospect of recession looming, there may be a need to transfer value from the business to the shareholders before it is too late to do so.

This may rise to an increase in shareholder disputes and to questions about the lawfulness of paying dividends in these uncertain financial times.

In addition, directors need to be concerned about their personal potential liability to their companies’ creditors on insolvency.

What You Will Learn

This live and interactive session will cover the following:

• Types of distribution: private companies and plcs have different rules
• What ‘rights’ shareholders have to a dividend
• The tax advantages or otherwise of receiving income from a small company in the form of dividends
• The procedure for declaring dividends
• Determining whether a payment is a dividend or something else, e.g. salary, loan
• Determining whether a dividend was lawfully made
• Recovering unlawful dividends from shareholders - who can recover, what criteria apply and what defences are available to shareholders?
• Liability of directors for unlawful dividends - who can recover, what criteria apply, and what defences are available to directors?
• Potential liability for directors on reduction of capital and on breach of duty to their companies
• Liability of directors generally on insolvency
• In order to prevent potential liability to creditors under s.172(3) of Companies Act 2006, and in the light of the Sequana case, what should directors do to ensure creditors’ interests have been fully taken care of