In any acquisition, whether for shares or assets, employee benefits and obligations must be taken into account. One of the potentially most onerous obligations includes the provision of pension benefits to employees – this makes it all the more important
employment contracts
Enforcement of restrictive covenants in commercial transactions

Restrictive covenants are often a key mechanism by way of which the buyer of a business is able to protect the value of their purchase. Indeed, in a 2017 review of legal trends in Canadian private M&A, Thomson Reuters has…
Non-compete: get it signed before!
This post was contributed by Jean R. Allard, Partner, Norton Rose Canada
In a recent Quebec Court of Appeal decision,[1] the court reversed a decision of all previous courts in a case regarding unfair termination for refusal to sign a non-compete agreement three years after the hiring date.
In this case, the employer, a pharmaceutical company, had recruited a chemist who lived in France.
The offer to the employee said he’d be asked to sign a non-compete agreement and a confidentiality agreement. However—and unfortunately for the employer—, only the confidentiality agreement was signed on the employee’s first day of work.
A few years later, after promoting the employee to director, the employer asked the employee to sign a non-compete agreement. The employee decided he wouldn’t sign the agreement unless the employer compensated him with a large sum of money and respected his demands on the duration of and territory covered by the non-compete clause.