Governance is the work of the Board of Directors/governing body. Governance involves strategy formulation, policy making, supervision of the management team and accountability to shareholders and others. The shareholders, investors fund the organisation, the governing body; the Board of directors are charged with the duty of governing the organisation to best utilise the investments made.

A corporation that is treated as a separate legal entity has its own rights and liabilities and enters into contracts in its own name. It can declare bankruptcy, amass debt, and hire employees. This does not impute legal liability to the corporation’s shareholders for any debts or actions taken by the company.

By share vesting, an employee,investor, or co-founder is rewarded with shares or stock options but receives the full rights to them over a set period of time. While we may refer to this process as ‘vesting’, it’s important to note that the individual does not actually have a physical claim to the stock until a certain time or milestone has been hit.

A few of the most common mistakes in M&A transactions include poor due diligence, quantifying value in the wrong way, and not getting comfortable with the integration.

When planning an acquisition or divestiture, companies need a wealth of information in short periods of time. The same information needed for investors, tax regulators and service providers is also required by everyone else. It’s easy to share data spreadsheets, but getting a clear picture of the “big picture” is hard without proper recordkeeping.