Summary: Longstanding friendships do not guarantee the perfect business partnership.
This was a fairly straightforward business partnership dispute.
Mr V lived overseas and commuted to their London office once a month. Mr O, the resident partner felt that he was carrying the load of the business on his shoulders and therefore demanded both a higher percentage of the business and substantially higher remuneration. The argument inevitably escalated and the business relationship between these two longstanding friends deteriorated very badly.
As a relatively new business, the company could not afford to pay the extra remuneration. Equally, it was argued, a partnership agreement had been signed by the parties at the start of the business.It subsequently came out in mediation proceedings, that Mr O was having domestic issues in the background.
This business partnership dispute settled by effectively ripping up the original somewhat questionable agreement between the two and drafting a new partnership agreement from scratch. What resulted was an agreement that both parties could live with. This agreement could be assigned to the bottom draw and only referred to if a disagreement erupted in the future.