Why is it important for California Corporations and even LLCs to take steps to ensure corporate governance and compliance is kept up to date in order to protect the corporate veil?  What are the components of a successful corporate governance and compliance program?  The experienced corporate attorneys at the Watkins Firm bring more than 40 years of experience to help our clients stay current with developments in local, State and Federal laws.  We help them to keep track of their obligations to hold annual meetings, keep appropriate notes and minutes of key corporate proceedings and decisions throughout the year.

We help our clients in all areas associated with the Board of Directors including selection, meetings, conflict of interest issues and even derivative lawsuits.  This can include but is not limited to how a Board is structured, as well as the recruiting and selection of board members.  We advise our clients on updates that may be required to critical corporate documents including bylaws, operating agreements, and shareholder agreements, as well as corporate policy and procedure guidelines.

Recent developments such as the Beneficial Ownership Information or BOI form are reminders to business owners to undertake several steps to bring their own corporate compliance up to date.  The failure to regularly submit corporate documents, minutes and other forms to the State of California (or State of incorporation) and to pay all associated fees each year exposes your company to extensive risk.  The Watkins Firm works with our clients to keep corporate documents updated and to ensure all filings and compliance obligations are fulfilled.

Pro-Tip: “Corporate governance is maintaining your corporation in a legal and proper fashion, such that you’re in compliance with all the laws of the state of California, so that you may be respected in your corporate form as a separate legal entity. It’s about fairness, it’s about fraud, it’s about doing business in a proper manner, which doesn’t rip off customers, doesn’t damage vendors or lenders. If you maintain your corporation in a proper fashion, keep your minutes, keep your statement of information with the Secretary of State filed, have your meetings and maintain proper records and do business separately, then you should have benefits.

You should have tax benefits, you should have investor benefits. You should have benefits of when you want to sell your company. And someone comes to look at it like when we sell a company, we have to come up with something called schedules. Schedules are what we use to identify all the different elements to tell a buyer this is a proper corporation and it’s a safe bet to purchase or to merge with. So all those things. And on top of that, if you comply with corporate governance, you’ll end up doing better in business over the last 35 years. The ones I see that don’t hold their meetings, that don’t keep records, that don’t refuse to commingle, those ones don’t do as well. The ones that really stay on it and run their business the right way are usually much more successful.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

We represent our corporate clients in all disputes, internal or external and manage all associated business litigation.  We help to keep your corporation current on all OSHA requirements, health and safety issues, governmental regulatory issues, wage and hour regulations and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

If you are concerned with the protection of the corporate veil, and the governance of your corporation we invite you to review our podcast Episode 10 – The Importance of a Strong Corporate Attorney as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.