Sky Blog
In a spate of recent decisions, the Delaware Supreme Court has embraced a shift in its approach to stockholder appraisal rights, a development that has attracted considerable comment. The greatest impact of these decisions, however, may lie beyond appraisal and …
In a new article, I consider two methods of valuing public companies in appraisal proceedings under Section 262 of the Delaware General Corporation Law: the unaffected market price of the company’s shares and the deal price (less synergies, as applicable) …
Delaware courts have recently had opportunities to address the dual conditions for management of controlling stockholder conflict transactions under Kahn v. M&F Worldwide Corp., 88 A.3d 635 (Del. 2014) (“MFW”) and its progeny. That MFW structure provides …
The Delaware Supreme Court’s recent decision in Fir Tree v. Jarden[1] marks an important milestone in the law of appraisal, making clear that unaffected market price can and should be decisive in some appraisal actions. Because the court’s opinion …
In re Dell Technologies Inc. Class V Stockholders Litigation (June 11, 2020) can be viewed as a routine decision analyzing the MFW prerequisites to post-closing review of a transaction proposed by a controlled company under the deferential business judgment standard. …
On February 20, 2019, Skadden held a webinar focused on a number of important developments in Delaware corporate law in 2018 and how such developments might affect M&A litigation in 2019. Specifically, the discussion focused on (i) the increasing importance …
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 …
As a whole, 2018 proved to be another strong year for M&A. Total deal volume reached almost $4.2 trillion globally, higher than the $3.7 trillion volume of 2017, but still less than the record of over $5 trillion set in …
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 …
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 …
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 2013, Michael Dell and his private equity partner, Silver Lake, brought the previously publicly-held Dell Corporation private at a price of $13.75 per share, a price that was approved by Dell’s board and by a 57 percent majority vote …
VMware’s shareholders enjoyed gains of nearly 60 percent in 2017 as the company positioned itself as an appealing play on cloud computing with substantial growth potential and partnerships with industry leaders like Amazon Web Services. Indeed, in its most recent …
Two recent decisions confirm that, in the wake of the Delaware Supreme Court’s landmark decisions in Dell and DFC, Delaware courts are taking an increasingly skeptical view of claims in appraisal actions that the “fair value” of a company’s …
Since the Delaware Supreme Court issued its landmark Dell appraisal decision in December 2017, the Delaware courts have issued three appraisal decisions—Verition Partners v. Aruba Networks (Feb. 15, 2018), In re Appraisal of AOL Inc. (Feb. 23, 2018), and …
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 …
