Business Transaction Law Covers More Than Contracts
When folks hear about business law services, it's common for them to assume the professional largely involves contracts. In business transaction law, contract law is a subset of the work that attorneys do. Likewise, it's a field many lawyers specialize in.
Business transaction law covers more ground than that. Here are four other types of business transactions you might have an attorney help you with.
Mergers and Acquisitions
Sometimes a company is the headline item in a transaction. There are huge questions when companies acquire other ones or merge with them. In particular, it's important to determine how power will be structured. Do all of the officers from one of the businesses just lose their posts, or will there be roles for them in the new entity?
Also, there is the simple fact that a merger or an acquisition still has to have terms and transfers of cash and assets. Lawyers will iron out the details before the paperwork is signed and value is transferred to complete the transaction.
Structures Involving Out-of-State and International Branches
It's common for businesses to have interests in multiple jurisdictions. Those interests are sometimes configured as separate corporate entities even if they're parts of the same larger organization. For a variety of compliance reasons, transactions between these interests have to be documented and handled as if they were between two different companies entirely. That means producing receipts, showing inventory changes, and planning to pay taxes.
Financial Agreements
Not all transactions represent simple transfers of assets or money. You might, for example, need to set up the financing for your business. That process will eventually run into business transaction law issues, and it's important to handle them with an eye toward potential legal implications. Such issues can get especially complex when properties are put up as collateral or elements of the company are securitized to back transactions.
Real Estate
In the business world, real estate can be an entirely different kind of asset than what you might encourage in the residential world. Two companies might, for example, engage in like-kind transfers of real estate assets for reasons beyond simply acquiring properties.
A common motivation for this sort of transfer is to limit exposure to taxation. It's important, however, for the deal to land on the right side of the law, otherwise, you might be staring at fraud charges or a huge tax bill. This includes setting up the right financial vehicle, such as a statutory trust, to handle the transfer and deal with the taxes.
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