Actions Against Directors

As a director you have contractual duties as well as duties imposed by law because of your position. It can get even more complicated where you are a director of a number of companies as you may then have competing interests. You have responsibilities to shareholders, to the company and to the board as well, as in certain circumstances to employees and creditors. Quite often you will be a shareholder too.

We can assist in all these areas, for example:

Claims by Directors

• Enforcing contractual rights such as share options
• Exclusion from the management, being forced to act in a way that you do not want too

Why choose our actions against directors team?

The Freeths team has wide ranging experience in acting for Directors who either find themselves on the receiving end of potential claims against them for their actions in office, or those who want to exit a company on the best possible terms.

We make a virtue of having an experienced partner handle your matter, who will be available to discuss any issue you might have when needed. This is complemented by closely supervised assistance from more junior solicitors to keep your costs down.

Advice on potential Insolvency situations

If you find yourself in the position of being the Director of a company that has been placed into or risks being placed into insolvent liquidation or administration, either by the shareholders or by creditors, the Liquidator or Administrator may try to bring claims against you.

The Liquidator or Administrator has wide ranging powers including claims for:

• Breach of Fiduciary duties
• Overdrawn directors loan accounts
• Transactions at undervalue
• Preferences
• Unlawful dividends
• Wrongful trading
• Fraudulent trading

Freeths can and will guide you through every step of the way, utilising our sector specific knowledge.

Ending your relationship with the company

If you decide that you want to move on from a company you may want to negotiate specific terms for your exit. If, for example, you may want to retain your rights to work with a client base that you built up in your next business. We can assist with drafting your exit agreement with the company in often difficult circumstances.

Directors Disqualification Proceedings

Any Liquidator, Administrator or Official Receiver has a duty to send to the Secretary of State, a report on the conduct of all directors in office in the last 3 years of the company’s trading who will decide whether in the interest of the public, the conduct warrants a disqualification order being applied for, if for example, they have breached their director duties to the company.

We have a proven track record of successfully defending such proceedings resulting in no order being made against our clients or negotiating much reduced periods of disqualification where appropriate. We are also able to negotiate the right for you to carry on working as a Director of a new venture.