Sky Blog
The UK Government published its highly-anticipated technical guidance on merger review and anti-competitive activity on 13 September 2018 which will apply in the case of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit (the ‘Guidance’). Although brief, it provides market players with some form of …
Of all the conjured hazards faced by the teenage gladiators in the dystopian novel The Hunger Games, the Tracker Jacker (a genetically engineered wasp) was the most deadly and unpredictable when provoked. Dell Technologies Inc. may soon have to …
For the last year, a heated ownership battle has been unfolding between Comcast and 20th Century Fox in their contest to acquire Sky PLC. Sky is Europe’s leading media company and the largest pay-TV broadcaster in the UK, with …
M&A activity in August, like July, continued the recent downward trend in number of deals across most sectors while showing more mixed results as measured by total dollar value.[1] The number of deals decreased in the U.S. by 39.4% …
There has recently been a pick-up in bank merger and acquisition activity that likely reflects both the increased importance of scale in the banking industry, particularly in the technology area, and regulatory and legislative developments that reduce certain obstacles to …
During a speech delivered on July 25, 2018 at the American Conference Institute 9th Global Forum on Anti-Corruption Compliance in High Risk Markets, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Matthew Miner, who oversees the U.S. Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) Fraud Section …
On July 11, 2018, the US Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Internal Revenue Service (the IRS) issued final regulations (the Regulations) continuing efforts aimed at curbing cross-border corporate expatriation transactions — commonly referred to as inversions — and …
M&A activity in June 2018 weakened from last month across most measures, although still generally strong for the first half of the year. The total number of deals decreased in the U.S. by 28.6% to 528 (the lowest level since …
A fundamental question in corporate finance is how mergers and acquisitions create value. Possibilities include generating economies of scale or scope, increasing managerial efficiency, improving production techniques, or strengthening market power. Synergies are a leading motive for doing mergers, but …
In response to the growing practice of “appraisal arbitrage,” in 2016 Delaware’s General Assembly amended the state’s appraisal statute, Section 262 of the Delaware General Corporation Law. The amendment to Section 262(h) granted corporations the option to “prepay” appraisal claimants …
In large part as a response to China’s national industrial goals and subsequent Chinese acquisitions of U.S. and European companies that are technology leaders in key industries, the U.S. government and a number of European governments are seeking to expand …
In a new cross-nation study, we discuss our findings on how the takeover market affects stock-price crash risk, defined as the likelihood of a sudden, drastic decline in the stock price of a firm. An important consideration for risk management …
Beginning at least as far back as Professor William Carey’s famously withering 1974 Yale Law Journal article about Delaware’s “enabling” of bad corporate actors, critics of the state’s corporate jurisprudence have alluded to a “race to the bottom” in which …
M&A activity in May 2018 generally weakened from the prior month. The total number of deals decreased in the U.S. by 1.2% to 667 (the second-lowest level in the last 12-month period) and globally by 4.8% to 2,759 (the lowest …
The issue of directors serving on multiple corporate boards has come under increasing scrutiny from both academicians and practitioners. There are two types of arguments associated with the conflicting evidence of how multiple directorships affect firm value and performance. The …
M&A activity in April 2018, as measured by number of deals, dipped from March 2018 levels in the U.S. and globally across every metric. The total number of deals decreased by 15.2% to 669 in the U.S. and 9.7% to …
It is an old maxim that “Hard cases make bad law.” But it may have a corollary: “Bad facts make hard law.” When a defendant clearly overreaches, the court may not let small details stand in its way. The decision …
Prior research has documented the existence of disclosure externalities, or information spillovers, between firms in a number of different settings. The idea is that when two firms are economically related, public disclosures by one firm can affect the stock price …
Last quarter, the Delaware courts issued the first post-Dell appraisal decisions—Aruba and AOL (issued by the Court of Chancery) and SWS Group (issued by the Delaware Supreme Court, affirming the Court …
In mergers and acquisitions (M&A), one of the trickiest tasks is assessing the value of the company to be purchased or sold. While in some cases buyers and sellers come easily to an agreement, in others the information asymmetry between …