µAs regards commercial matters, most of our clients are companies as most businesses operate their activities within a corporate vehicle, with or without legal personality.
As soon as two people allocate assets to carry out a joint venture, in order to share risks and profits (or to benefit from savings resulting from their cooperation), there is a company. As the development of an economic activity very often requires seed assets and more than one people involved, companies multiply logically.
The corporate contract organizes relations between shareholders, in compliance with the law, the statutes and the contractual provisions adopted by the shareholders.
To the extent that a company does not do business without concluding contracts, these companies are led to conclude many contracts with other companies at the discretion of their activities. A written contract is not necessary for there to be a contract between parties but is in many cases strictly recommended.
In addition, companies may still face a breach of contractual obligations, whether voluntary or not, and may disagree on the scope of certain rules, whether legal or contractual in origin. Such situations are the occasion for the emergence of disputes.
In most cases, the exercise of a commercial activity requires compliance with many of the rules that form the regulatory framework applicable to the company. These rules evolve according to the client (rules relating to consumer law), according to the sector (rules relating to access to the profession). The sanction for non-compliance with these rules varies. Failure to comply with them may make the activity illegal and be accompanied by administrative or legal sanctions. It may also affect the validity or enforceability of certain clauses of a contract (some clauses are prohibited in certain types of contracts) or even prevent the company from going to court. These rules are reviewed before starting a business activity and are updated regularly.
In addition, there are a number of points that are ancillary to the development of an activity, which a company must take into account. This is the case for the protection of its creations (intellectual property), in a positive way, and, in a negative way, for the verification that the activity carried out by the company does not conflict with the protected creation of another company. This is also the case for a number of other rules, which concern taxation, urban planning, etc…..
All these rules form normative environments of increasing complexity. By the combination of the superposition of levels of power, the internationalisation of business, the multiplication of national laws likely to have an influence on the situation of a business project, technological developments, regular reforms and the general trend of the legislator to regulate more and more sectors. As a result, businesses must navigate in business often more complex business environments.
We help our customers to implement all this, at different stages of development. We help companies navigate these environments. We mainly advise SMEs, although their size and level of development varies. (e. g. startups, scale-ups, SMEs, listed companies, companies in difficulty), in Belgium and abroad.
