Corporate governance - Vigil

In a recent decision relating to the sale of a portfolio company by one private equity firm to another—Prairie Capital v. Double E (Nov. 24, 2015)—the court provided important guidance with respect to a buyer’s ability to make post-closing fraud claims against a portfolio company’s executive...

In an opinion last week, the Delaware Court of Chancery rejected a disclosure-only settlement of a putative stockholder class-action lawsuit challenging a merger. In re Trulia, Inc. Stockholder Litig., C.A. No. 10020-CB (Del. Ch. Jan. 22, 2016). Continuing and perhaps completing its recent reevaluation of merger litigation settlement practice, the Court made clear that it “will be increasingly vigilant in scrutinizing” such settlements in the future and that disclosure claims should be litigated (if at all) outside the settlement context.

The conundrum of the perfect balance between mandatory and enabling rules and the role of private ordering in takeover regulation is one of the most relevant and interesting issues regarding the optimal regime for acquisitions of listed corporations. The issue is rife with complex questions and implications, both from a more technical legal perspective and in terms of public choice.

Prominent technology firms such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Groupon, Yelp, and Alibaba have gone public with the controversial dual-class structure to allow their controlling shareholders to preserve their indefinite, uncontestable control over the corporation. Similarly, in the concentrated ownership structure, a person or entity—the controlling shareholder—holds an effective majority of the firm’s voting and equity rights to preserve control. Indeed, most public corporations around the world have controlling shareholders, and concentrated ownership has a significant presence in the United States as well. Unlike diversified minority shareholders, a controlling shareholder bears the extra costs of being largely undiversified and illiquid. Why, then, does she insist on holding a control block?

Google owes a lot of money to the UK government. Well, a lot for us--not so much for them.

PE-backed companies outperform their public counterparts during periods of distress because the owners play a more active role in management. A McKinsey Quarterly article.

The Delaware Supreme Court’s decision in SIGA Technologies Inc. v. PharmAthene Inc. (Dec. 23, 2015) has increased the risk associated with entering into a “preliminary agreement”—i.e., an agreement to negotiate in good faith a definitive agreement based on, for example, a term sheet or letter of intent, where some material terms have been set forth and others remain to be negotiated.

On balance, the securities litigation landscape in 2015 offered a glass half-full/glass half-empty perspective for issuers and their officers, directors and advisors. Omnicare, Inc. v. Laborers District Council Construction Industry Pension Fund, 135 S. Ct. 1318 (2015), the major securities law decision of the 2015 Supreme Court term, afforded defendants relatively greater protection from liability based on public statements of opinion, as long as those opinions are honestly held and have a reasonable factual basis.