We’ve updated our shareholders’ agreement template for product companies, as part of a recent spring-clean of our governance templates.

What’s changed?  We’ve clarified that the non-compete and non-solicit restraints in the shareholders’ agreement apply only to founders/key people.  Investors generally don’t expect to sign up to non-compete/non-solicit restraints themselves, so it made sense to narrow the scope of that provision in the template (which originally captured all shareholders, but which we often found was changed to refer only to founders/key people).  We’ve also added a clause approving the establishment by the company of an employee share option plan, and confirming shareholders’ approval of shares and options issued under that plan.

The shareholders’ agreement is designed to go hand-in-hand with our template constitution (which we also updated recently).  Much like the constitution, it’s one of our most popular templates.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions about the updated shareholders’ agreement, or you’d like some help putting one in place for your company.