Sky Blog
In what promises to be a landmark decision, the Delaware Supreme Court last week reframed the rules governing derivative litigation. United Food & Commercial Workers Union v. Zuckerberg, No. 404, 2020 (Del. Sept. 23, 2021).
A Facebook stockholder …
In an important decision this week, the Delaware Court of Chancery permitted a Caremark duty-of-oversight claim to proceed against the directors of the Boeing Company. Stockholder plaintiffs sued Boeing’s board, seeking to recover costs and economic losses associated with the …
Two years ago, the Business Roundtable (BRT) issued a “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” signed by the CEOs of 184 major U.S. corporations, that rejected shareholder primacy, declared “a fundamental commitment to all [corporate] stakeholders” and linked corporate …
As directors and shareholders become increasingly attuned to ESG considerations and stakeholder-oriented governance, they have sought guidance about how to incorporate these imperatives into the board’s decision-making process—particularly regarding decisions that entail trade-offs or an allocation of resources between and …
The growing view that corporations should take into account environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in running their businesses, and resistance from those who believe that companies should be managed solely to maximize share price, has intensified the focus on …
In an article posted yesterday [March 2] on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance blog, Professor Lucian Bebchuk rejects stakeholder governance and, in so doing, attacks the committed positions of influential institutions as varied as the Business Roundtable, …
Corporate litigation in Delaware continues to reflect the judicial trend toward honoring the decisions of informed stockholders and independent directors, thus limiting those decisions from costly after-the-fact legal attack. While the boundaries of stockholder ratification and director independence continue to …
The Business Roundtable’s recent call for a commitment to long-term sustainable economic value creation has prompted a vigorous debate about the optimal corporate governance model for achieving that goal.
Certain familiar arguments have reappeared in reaction to the Business Roundtable’s …
The stakes for responsible corporate stewardship have never been higher.
Corporations today account for a greater proportion of our collective productivity than ever before. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 71 are corporations, and only 29 are countries. …
In a recent series of landmark decisions, the Delaware Supreme Court has constructed an orderly doctrinal framework designed to reduce wasteful post-closing merger litigation. These cases recognize that the market’s judgment is usually sound and that the costs of intensive …
A recent spate of appraisal decisions signals that the Delaware courts will be skeptical of claims that the “fair value” of a company’s stock, as determined in a judicial proceeding brought by a dissenter from the merger, will be higher …
In an important ruling last week, the Delaware Supreme Court reaffirmed that control of Delaware companies lies in the boardroom and held that the deferential business judgment rule is the “appropriate standard of review for a post-closing damages action” when …
In a recent paper, Professors Lucian Bebchuk and Robert Jackson have extended Professor Bebchuk’s extreme and eccentric campaign against director-centric governance into a new realm—that of the Constitution of the United States. They claim that “serious questions” exist about …
Last week, the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled that an acquiring merger party obtains legal control of all of a target’s attorney-client communications, absent an express provision in a merger agreement to the contrary. Great Hill Equity Partners IV, LP …
In a series of recent rulings, the Delaware Court of Chancery has provided guidance for boards coping with dissident directors. Kalisman v. Friedman, C.A. No. 8447-VCL.
OTK Associates, LLC is the largest stockholder of Morgans Hotel Group Co. Jason Kalisman …
The Delaware Court of Chancery this week held that the use of both an independent special committee and a majority-of-the-minority vote condition in a go-private merger between a controlled company and its controlling stockholder will result in application of the …
This year, the practice of activist hedge funds engaged in proxy contests offering special compensation schemes to their dissident director nominees has increased and become even more egregious. While the terms of these schemes vary, the general thrust is that, …
NYSE Euronext, the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals and the National Investor Relations Institute have jointly filed a rulemaking petition with the SEC, seeking prompt updating to the reporting rules under Section 13(f) of the Securities Exchange Act …
In a second Chancery transcript ruling on the subject in recent weeks, Chancellor Leo E. Strine, Jr. has made clear that Delaware has no per se rule against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Waive” standstill provisions (which prohibit a party subject to …