Lazy Shareholder

[tomforex]

I and two other people set up a company at the beginning of this year. we all had specific rolls, one individual does online software, the other electronics and myself mechanics. However since the company has been set up our software engineer has got increasingly lazy (so far taken him 8 months to literally do 2 weeks work) When my other business partner and I suggested that we would have to put further cash in (myself and my electronics engineer have spent 30k or so so far, whilst he has refused to put any investment in) to hire someone to do his job for him. His response is 'that's fine i still own 30% and nothings going to change that (i own 40% the other 60% is split equally between the other two partners) My biggest concern is we have orders coming in and that we are going to be blown out of the water because software just isn't being done. And myself and my good partner really dont wan't to invest large amounts of money just to cover something that should be being done by the software engineer who has 30% of the business! Please if anyone can recommend some good advice i'd be eternally greatful!

 

[JohnnyCash]

Resign and set up a new company with the hard working guy?

You might not even need to carry out the above - merely threatening to do it could be enough to get the lazy person to leave for a small payment. A few thousand pounds is better than 30% of nothing...

 

[Psl]

It depends what agreements you have in place as to what your next step should be.

 

[tomforex]

Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be there are no agreements in place. I like the idea of setting up again as all the intellectual property and hardware is owned by myself and the hard working guy. as of yet we haven't signed it over to the business for obvious reasons

 

[kulture]

It is a bit late to suggest this now, but when putting in more money you could have legitimately diluted the shares. So in the end he could have ended up with just 3% instead of 30%

 

[tomforex]

between the two of us we can easily put more money in for 'stock' etc, is 70% of a company enough to allow for creation of shares?