When you run a business, things don’t always go according to plan. Instead of the plain sailing you expected, suddenly there are shareholder disputes to settle. If you are the director you have certain obligations and the first one is the consult with a commercial lawyer to ensure you take the right road to recover. If you don’t, it is possible to lose the business altogether.

The first thing to be done is to negotiate with the other parties to try and resolve the conflict. If this doesn’t work it can be taken to mediation where a neutral party helps to facilitate the discussion so that the parties can hopefully, resolve the conflict. The mediator has no say in how the parties resolve it or in seeing that the resolution is a fair one.

Where failure to resolve once again occurs the matter then must go to arbitration. The only trouble with this is that the decision for how the resolution should come about is taken out of the director’s hands and even the shareholders will have no say. Very often the company must be wound up and everyone loses out. While the resolution is enforced legally and the judge considers his decision to be the fairest for all concerned, very often the parties are still left unsatisfied with how things were worked out.

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