FAMILY BUSINESSES

In family businesses, family members can be both shareholders and managers or just shareholders. This can lead to frictions and diverging priorities in decision-making processes, with negative consequences for the good functioning of the company. Governance rules can help in such cases. Our firm can assist you with the discussion and negotiation of:

  • Criteria for the recruitment of family members and pay packages
  • Decision-making power of the family CEO
  • Agreements on strategy, investment policy, financing and dividend policy
  • Composition and remuneration of the Board of Directors
  • Creation of a Trust Foundation to separate economic interests and decision-making powers

FAMILY CHARTER OR SHAREHOLDERS' AGREEMENT
Good contracts between family partners lead to better decision-making and prevention of conflicts.
Our firm is familiar with the drafting of specific agreements such as family charters and shareholder agreements. For each company, we work out the best solution. To this end, we provide guidance from the negotiation phase to the signing of an agreement.

TRANSFER OF A FAMILY BUSINESS
We are, of course, familiar with the legal aspects of company takeovers such as structuring the transaction, environmental issues, declarations and guarantees, taxation, pricing modalities and deferred payments, claims settlements, coordination with accountancy, importance of audits, etc.). In the case of family businesses, there are more aspects that require special attention and where we can give specialized advice:

  • Different interests: only some but not all family members may continue to work for the company after a transfer
  • Emotions, divergent expectations, difficult family relationships
  • Communication of legal matters to family members
  • Complications arising from inheritances and wills

We ensure professional legal and financial guidance through our specialists in corporate law and our financial experts, who – helped also by our mediation expertise – will work to achieve an optimal transaction.

MEDIATION AS A PRAGMATIC MEANS OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
We strongly believe in the usefulness of mediation as a way to solve conflicts. In the event of a conflict, we will assess with you the best form of conflict resolution for your situation: court proceedings or mediation.
Mediation makes it possible to solve conflicts amicably outside the courts. Even in disputes where no mediator has been appointed by the Court of Commerce, our mediators often succeed in solving conflicts between their clients and other parties by applying mediation techniques.
Our colleagues Lieve Dehaese and Guido Quanten have followed training as mediators in both civil law and business law.