Quick guide to shareholder rights and shareholding percentages

  • Helps you decide how many shares to issue
  • Clear and easy to follow
  • Provides detailed commentary

This quick guide to shareholder rights and shareholding percentages sets out the legal rights of shareholders (such as how much control they have over the company) depending on the percentage of shares that they own.

You can use this quick guide to help you decide how many shares to issue to different shareholders when you start your company, and/or whether to issue or transfer shares in future. It will help to make sure you are aware of which rights you are giving shareholders and how much control they will have over your company.

If you have a shareholders' agreement, you'll need to make sure you follow its terms too (eg you might give a shareholder additional rights to veto certain decisions or give certain shareholders different classes of share). Note that this quick guide assumes that your company is using the model articles and has one class of share.

You can also get this document as part of the Starting a company toolkit.

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