In a March 2016 working paper, Corporate Darwinism: Disciplining Managers in a World With Weak Shareholder Litigation, Professors James D. Cox and Randall S. Thomas detail several recent legislative and judicial actions that potentially restrict the efficacy of shareholder acquisition-oriented class actions to control corporate managerial agency costs. The authors then discuss new corporate governance mechanisms that have naturally developed as alternative means to address managerial agency costs. One of these emerging mechanisms possibly as a response to judicial and legislative restrictions on shareholder litigation, is the appraisal proceeding. As readers of this blog are well aware, the resurgence of appraisal proceedings has also been fueled by the practice of appraisal arbitrage.
Does the resurgence of appraisal litigation provide an indirect check on corporate managerial or insider abuse? Professors Cox and Thomas are skeptical, citing several factors that may limit an expansion of appraisal litigation beyond its traditional role. However, they acknowledge that there are circumstances where appraisal litigation can potentially fill the managerial agency cost control void that other receding forms of shareholder litigation have created.
As the paper argues, at first glance, appraisal litigation appears to be a powerful tool for investors to monitor corporate management and control managerial agency costs. However, shareholders face certain disadvantages in an appraisal proceeding, including the completion of required, difficult procedural steps that must be followed precisely to maintain appraisal rights (highlighted by the recent Dell decision); the lack of a class action procedure that would allow joinder of all dissenting shareholders in order to more easily share litigation costs; and the narrow limits of appraisal as purely a valuation exercise that does not take aim at corporate misconduct.
After identifying these general obstacles to appraisal, the authors discuss more specific factors that arguably limit the efficacy of appraisal for remedying management abuse in all M&A transactions. Thus, appraisal is available as a remedy only in certain transactions (e.g., the market-out exception), and even among those transactions that qualify for appraisal, initiating appraisal litigation may often not be cost effective, especially for small shareholders. Also, deals can be structured to minimize or even avoid appraisal altogether.
Cox and Thomas also highlight circumstances where appraisal may well serve as a check on management power. First, appraisal can protect shareholders from being shortchanged in control shareholder squeezeouts. Because these transactions are not subject to a market check, appraisal gives shareholders a tool to ensure that the merger price reflects the fair value of the acquired shares. Leveraged buyouts that do not undergo market checks may also raise conflict of interest concerns, especially when the target’s executives may seek to keep their jobs and be hired by a private equity buyer to run the firm. In this scenario, appraisal arbitrage may ensure shareholders are not shortchanged in a sale of control. Shareholders facing these circumstances may benefit from appraisal.
Second, appraisal arbitrage, as repeatedly covered by this blog, is a viable appraisal tactic. As we’ve previously discussed, appraisal arbitrage has been facilitated by the Delaware Chancery Court decision of In re Appraisal Transkaryotic Therapies Inc., which held that shareholders who purchased their stock in the target company after the stockholders’ meeting, but before the stockholder vote, could seek appraisal despite not having the right to vote those shares at the meeting.
In their 2015 article Appraisal Arbitrage and the Future of Public Company M&A, Professors Korsmo and Myers argued that a robust appraisal remedy could work as a socially beneficial back-end check on insider abuse in merger transactions, but the authors appear skeptical that appraisal can fill this role due to limitations discussed here. These authors don’t take a normative position on appraisal arbitrage but simply query its efficacy as a control on managerial agency costs.
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The Appraisal Rights Litigation Blog thanks Charles York, a student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and summer law clerk for Lowenstein Sandler, for his contribution to this post.