IVPractice areas
Commercial
The life of the company, from incorporation through to restructuring or insolvency.
We accompany the company throughout its life: incorporation, shareholders' agreements, contracts with third parties, growth by acquisition or merger and, should it come to it, restructuring or insolvency. Also generational handover in the family business, which is rarely a purely legal question.
- Company law: advice and corporate transactions
- Acquisition and transfer of businesses and assets
- Corporate restructuring: mergers and demergers
- Commercial and civil contracts
- Family business: management agreements, succession and family protocols
- Insurance, banking and securities market law
- Competition law
- Industrial and intellectual property
- Data protection, new technologies, e-commerce and the internet
- Procedural law and domestic and international arbitration
- Insolvency law
- Legal audits and due diligence
What clients usually ask us
What type of company should I set up to start a business?
For most businesses, the limited company (sociedad limitada): it limits the shareholders' liability to what they contributed and can now be formed with a minimum capital of one euro, with certain safeguards until it reaches €3,000. The public limited company (sociedad anónima) makes sense for projects with many investors or plans to list. Before choosing, it is worth deciding how control and profits are shared, and what happens if a shareholder wants to leave.
What is a shareholders' agreement for?
To govern what the by-laws do not cover or what is better kept private: how major decisions are taken, what happens if a shareholder wants to sell or dies, how deadlocks are resolved and what each shareholder may not do on their own. It is signed on entering the company, while everyone agrees, precisely so that it does not have to be negotiated once they no longer do.
What is a family protocol?
It is the agreement by which a business family organises the relationship between the family and the company: who may work in it and on what terms, how its managers are chosen, how shares are transferred and how the generational handover is prepared. Done well, it prevents the conflicts that close most family businesses, and it is coordinated with the wills and the tax planning of the succession.
My company is struggling to pay its creditors: what are the options?
The sooner you act, the more options there are. The law allows a restructuring plan to be negotiated with creditors before insolvency proceedings, and insolvency proceedings, if they come, seek either an agreement or an orderly liquidation. Directors also have a duty to file for insolvency in time when the company is insolvent, and failing to do so may make them personally liable. We analyse the situation and propose the route that best protects the company and those who run it.
Does your case belong here?
Set out your situation briefly and we will tell you how to proceed, with no obligation on your part.