Abstract
Buyers of shares are more vulnerable than buyers of other objects to the extent that they are more prone to pay a price much higher than the “real” value; and that the sellers have an aptitude to usurp the intangible assets of the target company after the purchase, mainly through a competition with the said target company. The vulnerability of the buyers of shares should and is able to be solved by resorting to conventional mechanisms freely developed by the buyers and shares, with the help of their attorneys. However, under French law, the contractual liberty necessary for an effective implementation of the conventional mechanisms, is restricted by omnipresent legal interventions, mainly manifested in two ways: for one thing, an unsatisfactory buyer of shares is able to get protected de plein droit, even without any conventional clauses to this end. For another, they are prohibited or restricted to stipulate certain kinds of conventional clauses for the very purpose. Accordingly, the focus of French discussions when it comes to purchase of shares is on how to bypass the legal restrictions on the contractual liberty and how to make a full use of the legal protections of the buyers of shares de plein droit. A comparison of the French law with Chinese law concerning purchase of shares will show that the French concerns of the legal interventions when it comes to purchase of shares, might to some extent be unnecessary, in that the legal interventions are inherently incompatible with the originalities of shares and de lega ferenda should be abandoned. Instead, under the topic of purchase of shares, what should be discussed is the multiple conventional techniques developed aiming at solving the inherent vulnerability of the buyers of shares; and a comparison of the conventional techniques in the two countries will be accordingly conducted.