Shareholders own a company but usually leave its day-to-day running to the directors. That split makes shareholder rights one of the most practical areas you will advise on: who can call a meeting, what votes are needed, when directors must seek approval, and what a disgruntled minority can actually do about it. Whether you are acting for a controlling shareholder, a board, or a squeezed-out minority investor, you need to know precisely where the power sits and how it can be exercised.
This lesson builds that picture step by step:
- Membership and Sources of Rights — how someone becomes a member and where their rights come from, ranked in order of priority.
- Rights Attaching to Shares — voting, dividends, capital and pre-emption, and what makes shares a single class.
- General Meetings, Notice and Voting — notice periods, short-notice consent, proxies, and show of hands versus poll.
- Members' Powers and Written Resolutions — requisitioning meetings, circulating statements, and how written resolutions pass or lapse.
- Dividends and Pre-emption Rights — how dividends are lawfully paid and when new shares must be offered to existing holders first.
- Shareholder Approval and Removal of Directors — removing directors, approving deals with them, and varying class rights.
- Shareholder Remedies — unfair prejudice, derivative claims, and just and equitable winding up.