Sky Blog
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 …
ExxonMobil’s proposal to change its domicile from New Jersey to Texas offers an important test of a principle that, in a forthcoming article, Corporate Disenfranchisement, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci and I call the Leopard Paradigm. The paradigm holds …
For decades, public corporations have generally treated Delaware as the state of choice for incorporation. Exxon Mobil’s proposed reincorporation from New Jersey to Texas challenges that approach in a distinctive way: Exxon was never a Delaware corporation at all.
That …
ExxonMobil’s board has recommended that shareholders vote at the May 27 annual meeting to approve the company’s change in domicile from New Jersey to Texas—a move that has triggered debate about whether Texas’s recent corporate-governance reforms weaken shareholder rights relative …
Delaware is dead, long live Delaware? To a U.S. M&A practitioner, much of the “Dexit” debate about whether corporations should exit Delaware as their jurisdiction of incorporation in favor of another state feels as if it may come full circle …
On February 4, Judge Alan Albright of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas issued an opinion declaring Texas’ anti-ESG law Senate Bill 13 (“SB 13”) to be unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, due to
Let me begin by thanking our hosts at the Texas A&M University School of Law for convening today’s program. Though only in its second year, the symposium has already earned a reputation for rigor and insight. So, to address leading …
Any state that aspires to be a serious contender in the competition for corporate charters must have a specialized corporate law court. Delaware leads this competition in part because of its Court of Chancery, which has produced an exceptional body …
The Delaware Supreme Court is considering a constitutional challenge to SB21’s major amendments to Section 144 of the Delaware General Corporation Law. The challenge, in Thomas Rutledge v. Clearway Energy Group, et al, comes as Delaware is ostensibly facing the …
Oceans of ink have been spilled analyzing the corporate world’s criticism of Delaware case outcomes in recent years and the Delaware legislative response in February 2025. In the wake of all that ink came discussions of whether corporate CEOs, boards, …
On September 15, 2025, Elon Musk filed a disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicating that he had acquired approximately 2.57 million shares of Tesla Inc. in open-market transactions on September 12, at a cost of nearly …
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 …
In a prior post, I explored whether Texas could challenge Delaware’s century-long dominance in corporate law. The Texas Legislature has since provided a compelling answer. On May 14, 2025, Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 29 (SB 29), a …
After the Delaware Court of Chancery invalidated Elon Musk’s $56 billion compensation package, Tesla made headlines by moving its incorporation from Delaware—the longtime gold standard for incorporation—to Texas. Following Tesla’s reincorporation, Texas moved to strengthen its newly created business court. …
On August 20, 2024, Judge Ada Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a permanent injunction setting aside the Federal Trade Commission’s final rule banning non-compete agreements in Ryan LLC v. FTC. Last …
Tesla confronted an enormous challenge in winning support for the two controversial proposals at the 2024 Tesla annual meeting: to ratify CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 pay plan and to redomicile from Delaware to Texas. We thought it would take an …
Safe harbors are useful and nifty. Consider the SEC’s accredited investor safe harbor under Rule 506 of Regulation D, which allows private securities offerings to sufficiently wealthy investors. Rule 506 facilitates capital formation and promotes efficient markets. Yet …
In a recent paper, we examine the economic impacts of a new Texas law to throw light on whether the often-heated political debate over environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues is empty political rhetoric or a reflection of substantive policy …