Sky Blog
Importantly, the Business Roundtable (an influential group of almost 200 CEOs of America’s most influential companies) issued a “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” which has intensified a developing focus on the social …
In 2017, shareholders of Tesla Motors sued Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, and its directors, claiming that the company, at Musk’s urging and under his influence, engaged in a conflict of interest transaction when it purchased SolarCity, a corporation owned by …
M&A activity in the U.S. and worldwide continued to be mixed in November. The number of deals fell by 13.5% in the U.S., to 721, and by 7.7% globally, to 2,710. However, total deal value[1] rose by 48.3% in …
The UK operates a voluntary merger control regime[1]. In addition, the European Commission (EC) operates a ‘one-stop shop’ jurisdiction to review the largest and most complex cases on behalf of all EU Member States, including the …
U.S. corporate law adopts a regulation-by-litigation model where the efficient balance between incentives and filters is essential for litigation to perform its function. In this model, over-litigation is not only a detrimental distortion but also a significant indication that the …
M&A activity in the U.S. and worldwide was mixed in October. The number of deals continued to fall with a decline of 11.2% in the U.S., to 744, and of 8.1% globally, to 2,708. At the same time, total deal …
Common ownership – the phenomenon of firms sharing stockholders with industry competitors – is becoming ubiquitous, with 82 percent of S&P 500 firms having common ownership at the end of 2015 compared with just 17 percent in 1990.
At least …
One of today’s most pressing antitrust questions is how antitrust should address the conduct of dominant technology companies, such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Once heralded as the champions of innovation and the modern economy, these companies are now the …
M&A activity in the U.S. and worldwide declined against many indicators in September, confirming numerous recent reports that dealmaking has taken a downturn. While the number of deals rose by 13.9% in the U.S., to 803, and by 7.6% globally, …
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has increased the regulation of asymmetric information-based trading, aiming to mitigate disclosure of material private information to select market participants. These efforts have not been fully successful, raising questions about the impact of …
After letting the option go unused for more than 20 years, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice recently announced it would use arbitration to settle its challenge of the proposed merger of two aluminum producers. In a press …
Managerial entrenchment is detrimental to shareholder value (Faleye (2007), Cohen and Wang (2013), and Cohen and Wang (2017)). Managers are able to become entrenched by making specific investments whose value is higher under their watch than under that of the …
A no-deal Brexit would have significant and immediate effects on UK competition law enforcement:
The U.S. antitrust agencies have struggled for decades to provide comprehensive guidance on the antitrust treatment of so-called vertical mergers—generally, mergers of two companies at different levels of the distribution chain. Recent developments suggest a new effort to articulate the …
M&A activity in the U.S. and worldwide weakened in August across almost all indicators. The number of deals fell by 9.5% in the U.S., to 641, and by 21.9% globally, to 2,394. The total value of deals[1] fell by …
Standardization can be a virtue and one that M&A lawyers, likely due to self-interest and ego, sometimes resist. If venture financing and derivatives practices can have widely accepted forms of legal documentation as a starting point, why should M&A be …
On September 9, 2019, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) released proposed regulations (the “Proposed Regulations”) that, if finalized in their current form, would in many cases dramatically reduce the portion of a company’s net operating loss …
The most significant securities decision to be handed down in the first half of 2019 came from the Supreme Court in Lorenzo v. SEC, which clarified the scope of “scheme liability” under Rule 10b-5(a) and (c). Another significant ruling …
The national security implications of corporate deals involving foreign investors continues to be a headline-grabbing topic. Last summer, President Trump signed into law the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 (“FIRRMA”), which expanded the types of …