With the case for withdrawal remedies made and critical comparative analysis of several jurisdictional variants conducted earlier in the book, Chapter VIII integrates insights from the theoretical and comparative analyses into a jurisdiction-neutral model withdrawal solution. This ‘Model Remedy’ gives effect to private ordering arrangements and offers judicially administered solutions where contract is absent or otherwise defective. Chapter VIII also explains the Model Remedy’s key features: a trichotomous classification of withdrawal grounds (fault, non-fault, and at will), and a combination of mandatory, sticky default, and default rules and standards differentiated by the grounds involved. Drawing on and improving upon existing legal regimes, the Model Remedy provides practical guidance on the design and implementation of calibrated withdrawal solutions responsive to a broad range of scenarios. It will be useful for legislators and judges seeking to address intracorporate conflicts in close corporations, and for legal practitioners drafting close corporation constitutions and shareholder agreements.

This Book critically examines the theory and operation of withdrawal remedies in the world’s four largest developed economies, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. This Chapter opens by introducing the legal problem at the core of the Book: the need for minority shareholder protection in situations of shareholder conflict in close corporations. After explaining out the objectives, choice of target jurisdictions, terminology, and the ‘tripartite method’ employed, this Chapter ends with an overview of the remaining Chapters in the Book.

Chapter IX summarizes this Book’s key findings and explores applications and extensions of the corporate law concepts and comparative law methodology developed in this Book. This Book contributes to legal scholarship in three ways. First, it establishes a coherent set of corporate law concepts and terminology that clarifies and expands our understanding of shareholder conflict and withdrawal across diverse jurisdictions. Second, it develops and applies a novel comparative law method (named the ‘tripartite method’). Third, I identify and analyse the phenomenon, which I call ‘spontaneous functional convergence’, in withdrawal law. This subtype of convergence occurs where jurisdictions appear to have – largely independently of other jurisdictions – developed legal regimes that are functionally similar but formally different using mostly, if not exclusively, domestic legal sources and inspirations. The spontaneous convergence observed in the withdrawal regimes of the target jurisdictions point to withdrawal as an evolutionary milestone for close corporation law.