Merging Businesses
We spoke to an old colleague of Michael’s this week who is merging his business with the business of another old colleague. He needs a share swap agreement with the first guy’s company becoming a subsidiary of the second guy’s company, and the first guy taking shares in the second guy’s company. They also want […]
Sale Agreement Improvement
We’ve been helping a client with documentation to buy a café this week. A real estate agent who is acting for the seller put together a rather shonky sale agreement. We have drafted a proper one using our own pro forma agreement. Among other things, our client can pull out if he is not happy […]
IT Legal Advice
Last Friday we received an e-mail from a worried IT service provider client. His client’s admin@ e-mail account seems to have been hacked, with the hacker: monitoring the e-mails; noticing an invoice being issued and sent out for $262,708.38; sending out an e-mail advising of a change of bank account, and asking for the invoiced […]
Businesses Extending Credit to Customers
A lot of businesses extend credit to their customers. We recommend businesses require their customers to make credit application, which incorporate the business’s terms of trade and can be registered on the personal property security register to give some priority in the event that the customer goes broke. They should include: All the customer’s details […]
Stormy Situation
We saw a new client yesterday with an interesting problem. He leased out commercial premises. They were damaged in a storm. The tenant was responsible for insuring the premises and should have noted the landlord as an interested party. The tenant received money from the insurer, but pocketed instead, and left. The owner wants to […]
Business Agreements
People are starting to do business again. This week we received some instructions to: prepare a sale agreement for the sale of 20% of the units in a unit trust which owns a business, where the buyer is another unit trust; an option agreement in favour of the buyer to buy another 29% of the […]
Disputes with the ATO (Our Clients, Not Us)
It has been a week for resolving disputes. Today Michael’s off to Francis Street Northbridge, to try to settle a dispute with the ATO. Unlike most mediations, this one has two “facilitators”. The main issue has been actually defining the dispute, because the ATO has so far been reluctant to spell thing out until yesterday […]
A Couple of Disputes
It has been a week for resolving disputes. We re-listed one matter for mediation after the two other parties failed to reach an agreement in the seven weeks since the first mediation appointment, when we thought we had a settlement agreed. Another matter was finalised last Friday and we were busy putting the terms into […]
IT-related Legal Work
We’ve been doing quite a bit of IT-related legal work this week – a copyright assignment deed in relation to a computer program, a head licence agreement, an IT services agreement, an end-user licence agreement and giving some advice regarding a software distribution agreement. In 1984 Michael received the Australian Computer Society Computer Science Award […]
More Business Deals
More people are starting to do business again. This week we received some instructions from one new to: help restructure a group of companies review family trust deed, unit trust deeds and unit-holder deed; prepare some complicated wills. Another wants documents to handle estate planning including special trust provisions in a Will to provide for […]