Devon Energy Corporation seeks to have the Delaware Chancery Court validate a shareholder vote after a notice snafu resulted in approximately 15% of shareholders receiving untimely notices on a $15 billion merger. After the merger closed between Devon Energy and WPX Energy, Inc. in January 2021, Devon Energy’s sub-contractor Broadridge Investor Communication Solutions, Inc. learned
CLS BlueSky Blog posts that the Delaware Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dell–and the Delaware appraisal decisions awarding below deal-price in certain appraisal actions–may give cover to Dell Technologies (the Dell of the Dell decision) in its potential rollup of VMware. Dell already owns 82% of VMware stock, according to the post, and may
In this post by Professor Afra Afsharipour of the UC Davis School of Law, she discussed what she identifies as the bidder overpayment problem, where bidders often pay more for publicly traded targets due to managerial agency costs and behavioral biases. The article notes that there are less monitoring mechanisms for bidder shareholders than there
The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation has published a post by authors Professor Yair Listokin and Mr. Inho Andrew Mun, regarding corporate law in a financial crisis. Reviewing the crisis in 2008 and the rescue mergers that occurred, the authors propose that during a financial crisis, corporate law changes–in particular
Some authors have noted that appraisal has become the disciplining remedy for the fiduciary duties of corporate managers. This may be true, regardless of the fact that appraisal is an independent and distinct remedy from fiduciary duty litigation. But sometimes the two are inextricably bound.
In late February 2018, the Delaware Supreme Court handed down
Yes, according to this posting. Delaware law requires that a shareholder seeking appraisal must not have “voted in favor of the merger” (which is impossible for nonvoting common stock) nor “consented thereto in writing pursuant to Section 228.” The mere fact that stock is issued as non-voting, as some recent IPOs have done, does
Seven years ago this week, in Roam-Tel Partners v. AT&T Mobility, C.A. 5745-VCS (Del. Ch. Dec. 17, 2010), then-Vice Chancellor Strine held that in a short-form merger, a stockholder can revoke its prior waiver of its appraisal rights within the twenty-day statutory election period, absent any prejudice to the corporation. In that case, the
The Vanderbilt Law Review published this note on Vice Chancellor Laster’s disqualification of stockholders in Dell who had inadvertently voted in favor of the merger, about which ruling we’ve posted before. This note breaks down that ruling and discusses the court’s strict requirements for appraisal procedure and its affirmation that share-tracing is not required of
On May 11, Vice Chancellor Laster issued an opinion in the Dell case denying the T. Rowe Price lead petitioner’s entitlement to proceed with its appraisal case on the grounds that it (inadvertently) voted in favor of the merger, when it should have abstained or voted against. The ruling did not address the underlying valuation