Put the ground rules between company shareholders in writing

Problems often appear when the business hits a pressure point, such as a founder leaving, a new investor coming in, or shareholders disagreeing on a major decision. If the rules only exist in emails or verbal discussions, there may be no clear process for share transfers, voting thresholds, dividend decisions or buyout mechanics. A written shareholders agreement gives the company and its owners a single reference point for those situations, which is especially useful where there are multiple founders, unequal ownership stakes or different roles in the business.

Most agreements deal with who can transfer shares, when consent is needed, how important decisions are approved, and what happens if someone wants to exit. They may also cover pre-emptive rights, drag and tag rights, director appointment rights, dividend settings, confidentiality obligations and deadlock procedures. The exact mix depends on your company and shareholder group. For example, a founder-led startup with outside investors may need different control and exit provisions from a closely held family company or professional practice.

The drafting usually turns on your cap table, the number of shareholders, whether there are different share classes, and how control is meant to work in practice. We may also need to consider whether your constitution already covers related issues and whether the two documents need to align. If one shareholder is contributing capital, another is running operations, and another holds a passive stake, the agreement may need different voting, information and exit settings than a company where everyone has the same role.

Off-the-shelf wording can help you see the usual structure, but it may not deal with the facts that make your arrangement different. However, it often stays too general for the way your company actually operates. It may not line up with your constitution, ownership structure or the commercial deal between shareholders. That can create uncertainty around matters like founder departures, compulsory transfers, minority protections or approval rights for major decisions. A tailored agreement is usually more useful where there are multiple founders, investor involvement, unequal contributions or plans to issue more shares later, because those details affect how the clauses should work.

Timing depends on how settled the commercial points already are and how quickly instructions come through. Once engaged, we gather the key details about the shareholders, ownership structure and the main rules you want documented, then prepare the agreement for review. If there are open points, such as transfer restrictions or reserved matters, we can flag those for decision before finalising the wording. After the document is settled, we can explain signing steps and where the agreement should sit alongside your constitution and company records.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Shareholders Agreement Company service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.