Sky Blog
The recent increase in the frequency and success with which “willful blindness” theories have been asserted in litigation may have long term implications for the corporate director’s liability profile.
Willful blindness is an aggressive liability theory that seeks to expand …
Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk believes that shareholders should be able to control the material decisions of the companies they invest in. Over the years, he has written numerous articles expressing this view, including a 2005 article urging that …
James Matarese and Danielle Lauzon are M&A partners at Goodwin Procter LLP whose practices focus on technology and life sciences companies. Their recent representations include Onyx Pharmaceuticals in its merger with Amgen in a transaction valued at $10.4 billion.
On …
The US antitrust agencies receive an average of 25 Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) filings per week. During the current government shutdown, …
Recently, the Delaware legislature adopted and Delaware’s Governor signed into law several substantive amendments to the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware (the DGCL), 8 Del. C. §§ 101 et seq.
New Provisions
Ratification of Defective Corporate …
Shuanghui International Holdings Limited (“Shuanghui”) and Smithfield Foods, Inc. (“Smithfield”) announced on Friday that the companies have received notice from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”) that its national security review of the proposed acquisition by
The following comes to us from Charles M. Nathan, Partner and Head of Corporate Governance Practice at RLM Finsbury.
Activist investors are currently the darlings of the equity markets and the financial media. Many of the leading activist investors …
The following post comes to us from Brent J. Horton, assistant professor at Fordham University Gabelli School of Business.
In my recent article, The Going-Private Freeze-Out: A Unique Danger for Investors in Delaware Non-Corporate Business Associations,[1] I examine …
The following is a joint press release from six federal agencies on the revised credit risk retention rule, available here.
Six federal agencies on Wednesday issued a notice revising a proposed rule requiring sponsors of securitization transactions to retain …
The following comes to us from Mohsen Manesh, an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law.
In the recently published The Geography of Revlon-Land,[1] Professor Stephen Bainbridge attempts to crisply delineate the boundaries …
The current proposals to accelerate the timing of beneficial ownership disclosure under Section 13(d) of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act and to broaden the definition of beneficial ownership to include derivative positions that provide economic exposure to stock price movement …
In a delightful essay, Ron Gilson and Jeff Gordon remind us that the times have changed and the Williams Act belongs in their view to the era of the Beatles. (Personally, I have trouble believing that Sgt. Pepper was really …
In an opinion issued on May 24, 2013,[1] the Delaware Supreme Court reaffirmed that an express contractual obligation to negotiate an agreement in good faith is enforceable and held that expectation damages[2] are available for breach of that obligation if
When the board of directors of a Delaware corporation begins a process that results in a change of control of the company (typically, a cash-out merger), the board’s Revlon duties are triggered: the directors then have a fiduciary obligation to …
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Jones Day or its clients.
In a recent article in the NYU Journal of Law & Business, we discuss some …
On May 29, 2013, Chancellor Leo E. Strine, Jr. of the Delaware Court of Chancery issued an important decision that lays the foundation for controlling stockholders to pursue going-private merger transactions with the comfort that, if certain conditions are met, …
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 …
The CLS Blue Sky Blog presents its first installment of our new series, entitled “The Marketplace of Ideas.” The intent is to present different perspectives on the same subject by two or more authors.
Today, Professor John C. Coffee, Jr. …
In a free-swinging and provocative attack, Brandon Gold, a graduating Harvard Law School student, argues (1) that third party bonuses, paid by hedge funds or others soliciting proxies, to their director nominees are acceptable and even desirable, and (2) that …