Home featured Featured Legal Opinion Featured How do I exit a shareholder agreement? Guest Author February 5, 2014 Getting out of a shareholders agreement can be tricky and often leads to costly disputes. At LegalVision one of the most common questions we get from our clients is how they can exit a shareholders agreement without grief. The basics Read your agreement! You really need to read your agreement closely to see what you need to do. Remember that a shareholders agreement is really just a contract and you agreed to its terms – terms which are set out in the agreement. In many cases a shareholder gets into trouble when they are trying to dispose of their shares for not following the rules they agreed to follow when signing the shareholders agreement. There are some key provisions in virtually all shareholders agreements which you will need to follow when trying to exit the agreement. Right of refusal/ offer: These are the most common and basic of pre-emption clauses – it means that if you want to sell your shares you first must offer to sell them to the other shareholders. These clauses give existing shareholders certain rights ahead of third-party purchasers. In the case of a right of first refusal offer, the person wanting to sell their shares must make the first offer to the existing shareholder(s), if the existing shareholders decline – then the person wanting to sell their shares can sell to a third party for that same