I had prepared a shareholder agreement for some clients. An issue arose between two groups of shareholders and one group asked me if I could interpret the shareholder agreement and that everyone had agreed that they would abide by the opinion.
However, when I spoke to the other group, it was not that clear cut.
So I offered to mediate instead.
I sought comments from all the shareholders, confidentially. I then sent everyone separate e-mails setting out what I saw as their downside first, and their upside second. These were largely the same for the two groups.
I determined that both sides really had arguable cases, and asked everyone if they could agree to meet in the middle, rather than spend a small fortune fighting about it. For the amount at stake, they all sensibly agreed to do that last week, leaving everyone equally unhappy.
So, if you hear of business people who have a commercial dispute, they might benefit from an independent third party acting as a mediator, and I can help – Mike from Michael Paterson & Associates.