Sky Blog
More than 40 years after its invention by lawyer Martin Lipton, the poison pill remains the subject of important judicial decisions and academic debate over corporate governance questions, in both the United States, its country of origin, and Japan, its …
Seeking “strategic alternatives” is a euphemism for a company trying to sell itself, which typically results in an acquisition premium for shareholders, and many announcements of strategic alternatives explicitly state that the goal is maximizing shareholder value. Upon a company’s …
2022 was a tale of two halves for M&A. The beginning of the year was active, as robust dealmaking carried over from the record-breaking levels of 2021 to drive approximately $2.2 trillion worth of global deals through the first half …
Consensus opinion coming into 2022 was that high M&A volume would continue, albeit not quite at the record-setting pace of 2021. The market had other plans. Volume decreased much more sharply from the 2021 high than was commonly expected. While …
The U.S. is the largest market for merger and acquisition (“M&A”) activity, with nearly 7,900 transactions accounting for a record $2.6 trillion in value in 2021.[1] The primary M&A enforcement agencies in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) …
The stock prices of takeover targets typically increase substantially prior to merger announcements[1] This increase attracts considerable public attention because it is usually perceived to be associated with the leaking of inside information. Hence, the numerous Securities and Exchange …
Top practitioners, judges, regulators, and scholars gathered at Columbia Law School on December 2 to offer their unique perspectives and cutting-edge insights on a variety of topics related to M&A and corporate governance. The topics included current M&A market trends, …
Patent thickets are dense webs of overlapping intellectual property rights. They are common in industries ranging from semiconductors to smartphones to pharmaceuticals. When many firms own the underlying patents, thickets complicate licensing negotiations and increase the risk of holdup and …
Financial disclosure is critical for the efficient allocation and reallocation of capital. However, the debate on the costs and benefits of disclosure mandates is unresolved, and the empirical evidence is mixed. In a new paper, we contribute to this debate …
Much of the vast literature on corporate governance focuses on internal issues, such as board characteristics. Yet external governance – the market for corporate control, often known as the takeover market – is critical to determining how well a company …
Boards are regularly called upon to guide management teams in answering the age-old strategic question: build or buy? But the already complex business calculus has become increasingly complicated in the past several years because of stepped up scrutiny of mergers …
How comparable are the financial statements of M&A bidders and acquirers in the same industry? And does financial statement comparability affect the outcome of a deal? In a recent paper, available here, we investigate these questions, using a sample …
On August 16, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (the “IRA”) (see our prior memo), which imposes a new 15% corporate book minimum tax (the “BMT”). The BMT is imposed, effective for taxable years beginning after …
The Fortune 500 CEO survey in 2021 found that two-thirds of interviewed CEOs consider cybersecurity risk their greatest concern, far greater than the risks presented by political instability or climate change.[1] They are right to be concerned, particularly in …
What did business journalists do before the arrival of Elon Musk? In those by-gone days, their page in the newspaper was gray, dull, and strewn with statistics. Now, it is filled with a continuing soap opera, as exciting as the …
From April 5 through April 8, 2022, the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association held its annual Spring Meeting in Washington, D.C. A prominent theme throughout the week was the role of the antitrust laws in the lives of …
Since the creation of the poison pill in the 1980s as a response to hostile takeovers, the corporate world has seen the rise of stakeholder governance, ESG, and stockholder activism and a host of other dramatic developments. The stock market …
On May 5, 2022, the U.K.’s Panel on Takeovers and Mergers (the “Panel”) published the results of a consultation that started in December 2021 to review the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers (the “Code”), together …
Significant volatility continues to disrupt the equity markets, with the major stock indexes swinging multiple percentage points often on a daily basis. Inflation, rising interest rates, the Ukraine crisis, continuing effects of Covid-19, lasting supply chain issues, a difficult regulatory …
Traditionally, high-growth private firms in the United States have used the public equity markets as their primary source of external financing to fund innovation and expansion. For this reason, well-functioning capital markets have been instrumental to the U.S. economy, supporting …