The attorneys at Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP that handle strategic alliance and joint venture arrangements understand that high-performing businesses regard strategic alliances/joint ventures as providing a critical means to achieve key business objectives and ultimately drive revenue growth.
Business goals underlying typical alliance agreements and joint ventures include the following:
- Facilitating access by one or more of the parties to key technology
- Developing an alternative to internal research and development (R&D) efforts
- Furthering the development of new distribution channels
- Leveraging the marketing or branding resources of one or more of the parties
- Paving the way for an equity investment or other capital transaction
- Outsourcing of one or more non-core functions
- Collaboration on development of a business concept, service or product
- Cost-sharing or cost-shifting
- Addressing a need for a business partner outside a core territory or home country
Whether related to marketing, distribution, technology transfers, outsourcing, acquisitions or the need for investment, our lawyers have familiarity with the many guises that such agreements may take and how to structure key alliance agreements and joint ventures to optimize the goals of our clients. Properly structured, an alliance or joint venture arrangement can make a great deal of business sense for each party involved. Conversely, an alliance arrangement that overlooks certain fundamentals may cause more problems than the lack of such an arrangement in the first place.
Crafting an appropriate strategic alliance arrangement or joint venture that will meet the needs of all parties involved typically requires legal counsel to draw upon multiple legal disciplines, including those related to licensing, venture financing, marketing, and distribution contracts, shareholder agreements and the rules for various business entities. In many respects each of these type arrangements must be “custom-built” — “cookie-cutter” approaches will not work. Because the business parties involved with a particular arrangement may seek to accomplish multiple goals, legal counsel must listen intently and intelligently to the parties’ expression of their objectives and then use this perspective to combine the various components from applicable areas of law into a coherent and workable structure.
We are proud to note that our clients across many different industries, ranging from manufacturing, distribution, technology, transportation and financial services, routinely look to our lawyers for their skillful guidance and expertise in this area.