Comparative aspects of shareholders’ agreement qualification and enforcement in court

Comparative Aspects of Shareholders’ Agreement Qualification and Enforcement in Court Shareholders’ agreements are not regulated by the legislation of the Republic of Lithuania in a broad sense, and yet they are concluded in practice. This implies that shareholders’ agreements perform certain functions in the Lithuanian company law system, have their own qualifying features, concept, aims and other essential elements of the agreement, which are analysed by the author in this thesis. The distinctive features of the shareholders’ agreement potentially make it possible to treat the shareholders’ agreement as an independent concept of agreement, the objectives of which cannot be attained by other civil contracts governed by law. Nevertheless, Lithuanian legislation governs some kind of agreements which are similar to shareholders’ agreements in terms of their qualifying features. These are voting agreements of members of a legal entity, agreements on the transfer of voting rights, and founding documents of a company. In order to clarify whether these agreements can automatically be referred to as shareholders’ agreements, the author analyses them using the qualifying features of the shareholders’ agreement. Taking into account that shareholders’ agreements are not directly regulated by Lithuanian legislation, the author also draws attention to the most relevant issues of the enforcement of shareholders’ agreements in court, analysing the most significant case law relating to the enforcement of shareholders’ agreements. Aimed at a comprehensive analysis of the concept of the shareholders’ agreement, this thesis compares Lithuanian legal relationships with the most significant common law and continental law regulatory traditions