Our guides

A guide is not an article. An article answers a question; a guide covers a decision from end to end — what has to be settled, in what order, and what each option costs two years later. It is a file you open when the decision is on the table, not a passing read.

Three rules apply to every guide on this page. First: every binding statement — a threshold, an obligation, a deadline — carries the reference of the text it rests on, and those references are collected at the end of each guide. A statement we could not trace back to a text we have read is not published, even if that leaves a question open. Second: a guide is revised at least twice a year, finance act included, and each page shows the date it was last verified — read that date before relying on a figure. Third: a guide stops where your own case begins. It puts you in a position to ask your notary, your banker or us the right question; it replaces none of the three.

Where to start: the formation guides are written to be read before the notary appointment, while everything is still reversible; the governance guides are for a company already trading, when the question becomes who decides what, and who answers for it. Several guides continue as a printable workbook that turns their substance into decisions to tick off, available at the foot of the page.