Sky Blog
On September 16, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed to rescind Rule 14a-8, the SEC rule that lets a shareholder holding as little as $2,000 of stock place a proposal in a company’s proxy statement, at the company’s expense, for …
Key Points
SPACs are public companies designed to die. Ordinary corporations, like Coca-Cola, enjoy perpetual existence under the law. Special-purpose acquisition companies, by contrast, are organized with a termination date from the outset—usually two years, and never more than three under stock …
On July 16, 2025, for perhaps the first time in the history of Delaware corporate law, a Caremark claim involving a public company director went to trial. Meta stockholders brought an $8 billion claim against the company’s directors and officers, …
For a century, Delaware has dominated American corporate law by securing incorporations from most public companies. This market share made Delaware law a common language among American business lawyers and law professors. Outsize attention to Delaware leaves other states, like …
In March 2025, Delaware enacted sweeping changes to its General Corporation Law (DGCL) § 144, reshaping the treatment of transactions involving interested directors, officers, and controlling stockholders. Subsection (a) of § 144 provides safe harbors for transactions between a corporation …
For the past two decades, Delaware court decisions addressing non-majority control have aligned with one of two competing schools of thought. A functional school has examined the ability to exercise control over corporate conduct, considered multiple sources of influence, and …
What should fiduciary duty require when new technology allows corporate directors to see risk more clearly? Though corporate law has long assumed that directors must make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, artificial intelligence and emerging quantum-computing tools may change what …
In a genuinely shocking display of regulatory hubris, the SEC just announced via an “Exemptive Order” the most significant change to the tender offer rules in a generation. The Order shortens the minimum period of a cash tender offer for …
The charters for Boeing and Google, two of the largest corporations in history, run just seven and eleven pages long, respectively. These charters say almost nothing about the nature of the company’s business and do not contain policies on business …
Why do we still mark the beginning of corporate existence with the filing of a charter? Why file charters publicly when the content is overwhelmingly focused on internal stock rights? Why does the leading jurisdiction of Delaware make charters so …
Corporate oversight under Delaware law rests on the two bases for liability, each identified in In re Caremark International Inc. Derivative Litigation (“Caremark”) and reaffirmed in Stone v. Ritter. The first is a failure to implement any reporting …
Boards face increasingly demanding requirements for oversight. It is no longer enough to have a compliance program on paper. Regulators, courts, and investors expect boards to ensure that compliance systems function to prevent, detect, and respond to misconduct. That expectation …
For decades, European policymakers have aspired to create a single capital market capable of financing innovation on a scale comparable to that of the United States. Yet, as reiterated by the recent Letta and Draghi Reports, that ambition remains …
Must a company allow a stockholder, no matter the size of its stake, to submit non-binding proposals for stockholder action at a meeting, regardless of their number or subject matter? The answer depends on whether, under Delaware law, stockholders have …
In a new article, I argue that, under current Delaware law, there is a collision between the definition of pre-suit demand and shareholder voice. To demonstrate, imagine that a sophisticated institutional shareholder of a Delaware public corporation has determined that …
In response to fears that companies would reincorporate in states like Texas or Nevada, the Delaware legislature recently enacted a controversial bill (SB-21) that makes the state’s law friendlier to persons controlling corporations. Many writers have commented on the Delaware …
Corporate law requires the directors of ordinary, for-profit corporations to manage firms in the best interests of shareholders, forbidding directors from sacrificing corporate profits in service of other goals. There has been longstanding debate, even amid proponents of this rule, …
In recent years, the failure of high-profile startups has drawn renewed attention to a persistent question in the venture capital (VC) world: How much diligence is enough when speed of investment is at a premium? Collapses at the likes of …
We are living in a particularly polarized era, and corporate governance is no exception. The divisions have threatened to spill over to Delaware, the preferred jurisdiction for incorporation in the United States, with several high-profile cases calling the state’s neutrality …