Use lease management or mandate management to organize your network

Lease management is a contract by which a business owner leases it to an independent who operates it, at his own risk, in return for the payment of a fee. It is governed by Articles L. 144-1 et seq. of the Commercial Code.  

This contract may be concluded simultaneously with a distribution contract (franchise, license, commission-affiliate, exclusive distribution) for the tenant manager to operate a sign and respect a distribution discipline defined and regulated contractually.  

The simultaneous use of these two contracts allows : 
  

• to promote access to a brand to distributors who could not acquire and finance the businesses alone and arrange them ; 
    

thus

• accelerate the development of the network perimeter ; 
    

• to capitalize on a location and a business without assuming its daily management while ensuring compliance with clearly defined operating conditions, ensuring the value of the fund ; 
    

• to control the geographical scope of your network of points of sale and therefore the market share of the brand, since you are signatories of the leases and owner of the business. 
    

This solution also allows you not to assume the day-to-day management of these points of sale by entrusting it to an independent operator.

  If you want the operating risk to be transferred to the individual operator, the lease management will be adapted. If you prefer to assume it, the mandate management contract could meet your needs.

  As part of a management-mandate contract, an agent manager is responsible for operating a business in the name and on behalf of a principal, owner of the business. Unlike the tenant-manager who operates the entrusted fund for his own account, the agent-manager operates it on behalf of the principal.  

More specifically, Article L. 146-1 of the French Commercial Code defines an agent manager as a natural or legal person who manages a business on behalf of a principal who remains the owner of the fund and continues to bear the risks related to this operation for a commission proportional to the turnover under a contract that : 
  

establishes a mission for
• it, specifying, if necessary, the management and operating standards of the fund to be respected and the terms of the control that can be carried out by the principal ; 
    

• while leaving him free, within the framework thus outlined, to determine his working conditions, to hire staff and to substitute replacements in his activity, at his expense and under his responsibility. 
    

Our method for drafting a lease-management or management-mandate agreement

1. The Gouache Avocats team will work with you to determine the contractual strategy best suited to your needs: mandate management or lease management, with or without a brand contract.
     
2. We will check that the conditions for using these contracts are met (existence of the business, authorisation of the lease management or the management mandated by the lease). 
    
3. We draw up your contracts in a personalised way using an in-depth exchange with you based on an exclusive questionnaire, the result of the firm’s experience.  We protect the value of your business assets, we strictly regulate their operating conditions to preserve and enhance your assets and ensure that your commercial policy will be respected.  We avoid the risk of retraining and the application of labour law to these self-employed workers.
4. We also provide you with the pre-contractual information document required by law for each of these contracts. The lease management may fall within the scope of Article L. 330-3 of the Commercial Code, while the mandate management falls within the scope of the special pre-contractual information of Article L. 146-2 of the Commercial Code.
5. We carefully articulate, if required, the management lease agreement with the brand agreement. 
    
6. We publish your lease-management agreement as soon as it is concluded so that the lessor of the business is no longer jointly and severally liable for the debts contracted by the lessor during the operation of the business, as of this publication date. 
     

Gouache Avocats drafts your bespoke lease-management or mandate-management contract

We will work with you to determine the contractual strategy best suited to your needs: mandate management or lease management, with or without a brand contract. We will check that the conditions for using these contracts are met. We customize the drafting of your contracts by using an in-depth exchange with you on the basis of an exclusive questionnaire, the result of the firm’s experience. We carefully articulate, if required, the management lease agreement with the brand agreement. We also provide you with the pre-contractual information document required by law for each of these contracts.