SME Law

Business Organization is an integral part of any business. Along with the legal implications and tax consequences, the business and its owner must be considered when planning for business organization transactions.

At SME, our corporate lawyers assess your current business circumstances carefully, collaborate with our advisory, tax, and accounting teams and accordingly provide legal strategies for business success.

Our business organization services include:

Corporate Amalgamations, Reorganizations, and Restructurings

Corporate amalgamation, reorganizations and restructurings can be complex and you will require professional legal assistance so that your business can transition easily through these processes. The lawyers at SME will help you at every stage of amalgamation. Whether it is to determine the goals and objectives of amalgamation, determining whether to proceed with short or long form amalgamation, preparing and filing an article of amalgamation and related materials, or completing post-amalgamation organizational steps, our legal consultants will ensure that the amalgamation deal is a success.

SME’s legal advisors provide a holistic approach to your business reorganization needs, such as simplifying group structures, aligning legal structures to business models, transferring assets and business units, integrating legal structure for merger or acquisition, and so forth. We deliver practical solutions throughout the planning, development, and implementation phases of corporate reorganizations.

Global markets are dynamic and challenging. To stay ahead of the competition, you may want to restructure your business to reduce operating and administrative costs, invest in emerging markets, optimize supply chain processes or maximize the opportunities that are available to you. SME’s proficient legal advisors support our clients in effectively restructuring their business processes.

Our lawyers will help you implement pre-deal separation and carve-outs, post-deal integrations, intra-group financing and refinancing, cross-border and domestic mergers, cash repatriation, alignment of legal structure to business divisions, and so forth.

Business Succession Planning

Due to the fact that every business has unique needs, it is crucial to create customized succession planning, structuring, and estate planning strategies for business owners and individuals. SME’s legal advisors have more than a decade of experience in business succession planning and have catered to many corporates, SMEs and publicly listed companies across Canada.

Our legal professionals will help you with various business succession planning issues such as identifying the business’ position and the directors’ goals and aspirations, business strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats. Subsequently, our advisors devise successful exit strategies, manage tax implications, create strategies for commercial asset protection and prepare wills and powers of attorney documents. At SME, we have an integrated team of lawyers, accountants, and financial advisors who work alongside our clients’ and assist in achieving a complete business succession plan.

Corporate Maintenance

Corporate maintenance is vital to protect your valuable assets from potential future liability and risks. SME’s legal services help clients maintain their corporate formalities and remove the burden to further protect the business entity.

We cater to many corporates in Canada and offer efficient corporate maintenance services in order to achieve our clients’ business goals and objectives. The lawyers at SME provide assistance on day-to-day corporate governance and annual issues including but not limited to annual meetings, annual reports, corporate bookkeeping practices, board meeting minutes, reminder notices, providing follow-up attention and ensuring complete corporate records. SME legal advisors will work simultaneously with you at every stage of corporate maintenance and deliver customized strategies to ensure success for your business.

Stock Option Plans

A viable stock option plan is not only beneficial for business owners’ and employees but it in turn helps the organization increase its overall productivity. It is crucial for an employer to approach stock option plans carefully. A well-drafted stock option agreement can be an advantage to the organization. However, if the stock option plan is poorly drafted, it may lead to several legal and financial damages and has the potential to affect the goodwill of the organization.

At SME, our knowledgeable and experienced legal advisors have assisted businesses of all sizes and have successfully prepared meticulous stock option agreements in compliance with laws and regulations. We can help you draft an option agreement that dictates crucial terms of the offer such as vesting schedule, the time limit for exercising the option once it is vested and other special terms. Our lawyers work closely with our clients at every step of the legal process to ensure that they make informed decisions to successfully meet their business goals and objectives.