Boston Business Attorneys & Lawyers

What Are Outstanding Shares?

The term “outstanding shares” (aka “shares outstanding”) refers to the total of all shares of your company’s stock held by all of your investors, including restricted shares owned by company officers and institutional investors.

You will find the total number of outstanding shares listed on your company’s balance sheet under the “Capital Stock Issued and Outstanding” heading. You can also calculate the number of outstanding shares by adding the total number of preferred stock shares to the total number of common stock shares, and then subtracting the total nu

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What Are Class A Shares?

Class A shares are common or preferred stocks that offer special benefits to owners. Class A shares are the best class of stock. Upper- level management, executives, owners, and founders of the company usually hold this kind of stock. It offers the highest level of voting rights, too.

Why Do Class A Shares Matter?

Classes of stock often have ownership restrictions. They also might have different purposes. For instance, some stock classes are for investment purposes. Some sell at different prices, and some pay different dividends.

Class A shares offer the most benefits. Still, any good company's stock classes shouldn't matter to investors. All the stocks have some value, just not the same benefits. The stock class doesn't affect the average investor's profit share. That'

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What Are Co-sale Rights?

Co-sale rights, also known as tag-along or (less often) take-me-along rights, are the rights of minority shareholders to join in when the majority shareholder or the founders sell their stock. Therefore, if the company's original owner sells his or her stock to a corporation for $20 per share, every investor with a co-sale right can get the same deal.

Co-sale rights are usually paired with the right of first refusal, or ROFR. With an ROFR clause, a company or its shareholders can buy the majority shareholder's stock if he or she decides to sell to a third party. This lets the current investors keep control of the company in case they don't like the third-party investor.

For example, say a company called Un

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Updated August 18, 2020: 

In the business world, companies merge all the time. Today startups are doing the same to expand and change the way they do business. An acquisition involves buying a company and changing it to fit the way you do business. The goal is to create a new company made of the best parts of your business and the proven parts of another.

A startup would buy another business for various reasons. These reasons include access to new technology and access to new markets. Buying a company can mean being able to make new products and having access to new resources or fresh management talent. However, if you handle an acquisition poorly, your business could take on the mistakes of a broken organization and heavy losses.

Here is a step-by-step guide of how a startup acquires another company.

1. Make a Plan

Look at the reasons to buy a compan

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What Is Strike Price?

Strike price is the price at which a specific derivative contract can be executed. It is the most important indicator of value for contracts.

The strike price, also known as the exercise price, is usually decided when a contract for an option is first written and agreed.

Some financial products receive value from other financial products. These products are called "derivatives," and there are two major types:

• Calls give the holder the right, not the obligation, to buy stock in the future at a certain price.
• Puts give the holder the right, not the obligation, to sell a stock in the future at a certain price.

The price at which calls and puts are bought or sold is called the strike price, which is used to tell call and put contracts apart.

Why Is Strike Price Important

The strike price is

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