Number of Appraisal Rights Filings

We’ve posted before about the article by Professors Charles Korsmo and Minor Myers analyzing the recent surge in appraisal activity.  These co-authors have prepared a new draft article to be published in the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, proposing reforms for appraisal litigation.  Based on their latest research the authors stand by their prior conclusion

Today’s Hedge Fund Law Report ran an article about the appraisal remedy, its positive results and its distinctiveness from traditional stockholder litigation.  That article, “Stockholder Appraisal Actions Present an Attractive Litigation-Based Strategy for Hedge Fund Managers,” also discusses the proposed legislative amendments, judicial limitations and potential opportunities that we’ve posted on before.

We have blogged before (see here) about a then-forthcoming law review article by Professors Charles Korsmo (Associate Professor at Brooklyn Law School) and Minor Myers (Associate Professor at Brooklyn Law School) analyzing the value-creation resulting from the increased use of appraisal arbitrage.  The authors’ paper has now been published in the final 2015 issue

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, stockholders owning about 5 percent of AOL, Inc., are seeking greater returns than the $50/share buyout price paid by Verizon Communications by pursuing appraisal of their shares.  The deal was valued at $4.4 billion.  As reported in the article, this appraisal case is yet another example of

Professors Korsmo and Myers have once again lauded the benefits of appraisal litigation and chastised its critics for pressuring the Delaware bar council to reconsider its recent decision not to limit or eliminate appraisal arbitrage.  In their latest piece, the authors reaffirm their findings that appraisal cases comprise that rare form of shareholder suit

As we’ve previously posted, the Corporation Council of the Delaware bar had taken up the question of whether to ban or curtail appraisal arbitrage, and more recently decided to take no such action after determining that the practice had no discernable negative effects on mergers and acquisitions and, if anything, continued to protect shareholder value. 

We posted earlier this week regarding a white paper written by the Council of the Corporation Law Section of the Delaware state bar, which was issued alongside the Council’s proposed amendments to Delaware’s appraisal statute.  The Council had considered amendments to address the practice of appraisal arbitrage, but ultimately did not make any recommendations to

We posted last week about new legislative amendments to the appraisal remedy proposed by the Council of the Corporation Law Section of the Delaware state bar association, an influential group of Delaware lawyers.  The amendments were accompanied by an explanatory white paper explaining the rationale behind those recommendations that the Council made, and of note,

The Corporation Council of the Delaware bar released proposed amendments to Delaware’s General Corporation Law last week.  Among the various proposals, ranging from fee-shift provisions to forum-selection clauses in corporate bylaws, the committee proposed two changes to Delaware’s statutory appraisal remedy: first, to bar appraisals by shareholders holding 1% or less of the outstanding stock

A new piece by Reuters Breakingviews, M&A at Last Finds a Way for Lawsuits to Pay, covers last week’s rulings on appraisal arbitrage by the Chancery Court in Ancestry.com and BMC (which we posted about last week), and also observes generally that appraisal actions are “surprisingly successful” and are thus witnessing a