The Harvard Business Law Review has published “The High Cost of Fewer Appraisal Claims in 2017: Premia Down, Agency Costs Up” an article we’ve blogged about previously, including commentary from interested authors. The HBLR piece, by Matthew Schoenfeld, argues that weakened shareholder litigation reduces the acquisition premium in mergers. This is another
The Delaware Supreme Court issued its highly-anticipated ruling today in the Dell appraisal case, reversing and remanding the trial court’s 28% premium awarded to the stockholders. In sum, the court held that where a company is sold in a pristine M&A auction process, the chancery court must give the merger price “heavy weight” in its
On Monday, Law360 [$$] reported that the stockholders in the Clearwire appraisal action filed their opening brief in support of their appeal of the Chancery Court’s ruling, which found the fair value of Clearwire Corp. to be $2.13 per share, well below the $5 per share deal price paid by Sprint Nextel Corp. As reported
The Delaware Supreme Court made its ruling this week in the ISN Software appraisal case. A three-judge panel (not the full bench) affirmed the Chancery Court’s decision awarding a premium that was more than 2.5 times the merger price, as reported in Law360 [$$]. The Supreme Court affirmed without rendering its own opinion, relying instead
As reported in Law360 [$$], on October 11, 2017 the Delaware Supreme Court heard argument appealing the Chancery Court’s ruling in the ISN Software appraisal case. We have previously posted on the trial court’s decision here, in which Vice Chancellor Glasscock awarded a premium to the merger price. The Supreme Court did not rule
Lexology’s Federal Securities Law Blog has this analysis of the recent article we posted about, the High Cost of Fewer Appraisal Claims. The author, from Porter Wright in Ohio, notes that the recent data on appraisal claims dispel certain arguments made by the anti-appraisal crowd. In particular, he writes, “Prior to the
As reported today in Law360 [$$], the Delaware Supreme Court heard argument yesterday on the chancery court’s ruling in the Dell appraisal case. The court did not render its decision and did not indicate when it would do so. We’ll continue to monitor the docket and post when the ruling comes down.
** Note: this
The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation posted yesterday on Merger Negotiations in the Shadow Judicial Appraisal. In this post, Professors Brian Broughman, Audra Boone, and Antonio Macias address the explosion in merger litigation over the past decade and present their empirical study testing the competing explanations of the ex-ante
As we have posted before, the Delaware Supreme Court rendered its much-awaited ruling in the DFC Global case on August 1. Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the key elements of that ruling.
I. No Judicial Presumption Imposing Mandatory Merger Price Ruling
The Court started off its opinion by rejecting DFC Global’s request to establish “by judicial gloss” a presumption that fair value would be tethered to merger price in certain cases involving an arm’s-length M&A transaction. The Court said that it would “decline to engage in that act of creation, which in our view has no basis in the statutory text, which gives the Court of Chancery in the first instance the discretion to ‘determine the fair value of the shares’ by taking into account ‘all relevant factors.’” The Court adhered to its 2010 ruling in Golden Telecom in finding the statute’s “all relevant factors” inquiry to be broad, and reaffirmed the chancery court’s discretion to undertake that inquiry until such time as the Delaware legislature may choose to revise the statute in this regard (we are not aware of any such legislative activity currently underway).Continue Reading Breaking Down the Delaware Supreme Court’s DFC Global Decision**
Today the Delaware Supreme Court reversed and remanded the appraisal decision of the Chancery Court in the highly watched DFC Global case. A more detailed post will follow, but we wanted to flag the ruling in the meantime.
The court declined DFC Global’s request to impose a presumption by “judicial gloss” that would peg fair