Wednesday 7 November 2012

Decision making – shareholder trumps director

It is fairly commonplace for a director to hold a dual role within a company, acting as director and/or shareholder, officer or representative of a shareholder. These roles should for the most part align with one another, however, if these dual interests come to conflict, the importance of reconciling the terms of any shareholders’ agreement with the company’s articles of association soon becomes paramount.
The recent case of Jackson v Dear and another [2012] EWHC 2060 (Ch) examines the position of parties to a shareholders’ agreement who are also directors of that same company and are accordingly subject to the usual fiduciary and directorial duties.
Facts
The case concerned three individual founders of a company who together owned a second company, which held all the voting shares in their founding company. The Claimant, being one of the founders, entered into a shareholders’ agreement with the other founders, which provided for (amongst other things) his appointment as director of both the founding company and the second company, terminable upon the occurrence of agreed termination events. The Articles, however, provided for the removal of a director by notice given by two or more other directors. This latter power was invoked by the 2 remaining founder Defendants on the premise that they viewed the Claimant to be unsuitable as a director and as such were fiducially required to remove him.
Essentially, the Defendant directors sought to remove the Claimant in their capacity as directors through the use of the company’s Articles thereby actively circumventing their commitment to the Claimant as parties to the shareholders’ agreement.
Decision
It was held by Justice Briggs that it was an implied term of the shareholders’ agreement that the Claimant would not be removed unless there was an event justifying termination under that agreement. Furthermore, the Claimant, as a contracting party, was entitled to assume that the other parties would not voluntarily render the agreement inoperative. Significantly, Justice Briggs went on to outline three alternative methods to avoid a breach of fiduciary duty on which the Defendants’ case so heavily relied, as follows:
1.      By making the second company sanction the breach of fiduciary duty in not removing an allegedly unfit director, or
2.      By the Defendants’ giving a direction to the board not to remove the Claimant under the Articles of the second company; or
3.      By amending the Articles of the founding company so as to disable the Article against the Claimant, save for a Termination Event occurring.
Conclusion
Crucially, in as much as this case essentially reconciles the current case law relating to implied terms and interpretation of contracts, it also acts as a caution to all directors who may be under the illusion that, by regarding themselves as two separate entities (being director and shareholder), they can advantageously rely upon a company’s Articles to circumvent onerous clauses within the shareholders’ agreement. It is instead the case that, unless there’s an effective carve out in the shareholders’ agreement; the contract principle that a party must do nothing of his own motion to render an agreement inoperative, will prevail.
For more information on the drafting or interpretation of shareholders’ agreements or any of above, please feel free to contact Partner Andy Wilks, 0207 841 0390.