
Standardization of a share purchase agreement (SPA)
for small and mid-cap transactions
A team of experts, including but not limited to inhouse legal departments, law firms, banks, legal designers and universities, aims to create a wildly accepted Standard SPA for small- and mid-size private M&A transactions. Such Standard SPA template will provide generic document structure and basic T&C’s, and in addition guidance on relevant aspects of the M&A transaction such as a fair and balanced allocation of risks and responsibilities.
A Standard SPA will allow to execute transactions faster, more effective and in a digital negotiation & execution environment. Instead of arguing over the “best” template the team can focus on the specifics of the transaction.
At the start of a new transaction, the parties of an M&A transaction might agree to the use the publicly available Standard SPA. It can also be used for future automation scenario, e.g. on a Common Legal Platform or other collaboration tools.
The project will be co-headed by LLI representatives and a designated project resource from Deloitte and carried in the following 5 phases:
- Scoping: understand and gather content
- Standardization: jointly create a Standard SPA template draft
- Adoption: align with all stakeholders and communication plan
- Visualization: showcase the “simplification” of templates
- Digitalization: agree on how to automate the template (clauses)
The project has been accepted by the Liquid Legal Institute in March 2019 and is now open for members.