Business Courts
A Brief History of the Creation and Jurisdiction of Business Courts in the Last Decade
Mitchell Bach & Lee Applebaum, 60(1): 147—275 (Nov. 2004)
Specialized practices operated by those possessing an extraordinary body of knowledge, training and/or experience are a routine and expected part of daily life. Specialized "business courts" or "commercial courts" within state trial court systems have become increasingly common since the early 1990s, and it appears that such courts are finding a firm place in the legal community. The authors set out some of the history and jurisdictional scope of these "business courts" designed to create a reliable venue for the thoroughgoing address of business and commercial litigation.
Empty Voting and Hidden (Morphable) Ownership: Taxonomy, Implications, and Reforms
Henry T. C. Hu and Bernard Black, 61(3):1011–1070 (May 2006)
Most American publicly held corporations have a one-share, one-vote structure, in which voting power is proportional to economic ownership. This structure gives shareholders economic incentives to exercise their voting power well and helps to legitimate managers' exercise of authority over property the managers do not own. Berle-Means' "separation of ownership and control" suggests that shareholders face large collective action problems in overseeing managers. Even so, mechanisms rooted in the shareholder vote, including proxy fights and takeover bids, constrain managers from straying too far from the goal of shareholder wealth maximization.
In the past few years, the derivatives revolution, hedge fund growth, and other capital market developments have come to threaten this familiar pattern throughout the world. Both outside investors and corporate insiders can now readily decouple economic ownership of shares from voting rights to those shares. This decoupling—which we call "the new vote buying"—is often hidden from public view and is largely untouched by current law and regulation. Hedge funds, sophisticated and largely unfettered by legal rules or conflicts of interest, have been especially aggressive in decoupling. Sometimes they hold more votes than economic ownership, a pattern we call "empty voting." That is, they may have substantial voting power while having limited, zero, or even negative economic ownership. In the extreme situation of negative economic ownership, the empty voter has an incentive to vote in ways that reduce the company's share price. Sometimes hedge funds hold more economic ownership than votes, though often with "morphable" voting rights—the de facto ability to acquire the votes if needed. We call this "hidden (morphable) ownership" because under current disclosure rules, the economic ownership and (de facto) voting ownership are often not disclosed. Corporate insiders, too, can use new vote buying techniques.
This article analyzes the new vote buying and its corporate governance implications. We propose a taxonomy of the new vote buying that unpacks its functional elements. We discuss the implications of decoupling for control contests and other forms of shareholder oversight, and the circumstances in which decoupling could be beneficial or harmful to corporate governance. We also propose a near-term disclosure-based response and sketch longer-term regulatory possibilities. Our disclosure proposal would simplify and partially integrate five existing, inconsistent share-ownership disclosure regimes, and is worth considering independent of its value with respect to decoupling. In the longer term, other responses may be needed; we briefly discuss possible strategies focused on voting rights, voting architecture, and supply and demand forces in the markets on which the new vote buying relies.
Revisiting Consolidated Edison—A Second Look at the Case that Has Many Questioning Traditional Assumptions Regarding the Availability of Shareholder Damages in Public Company Mergers
Ryan D. Thomas and Russell E. Stair, 64(2): 329-358 (February 2009)
In October 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Consolidated Edison, Inc. v. Northeast Utilities ("Con Ed") ruled that electric utility company Northeast Utilities ("NU") and its shareholders were not entitled to recover the $1.2 billion merger premium as damages after NU's suitor, Consolidated Edison, refused to complete an acquisition of NU. This case surprised many M&A practitioners who believed that the shareholder premium (or at least some measure of shareholder damages) would be recoverable in a suit against a buyer that wrongfully terminated or breached a merger agreement. If Con Ed proves to have established a general rule precluding the recovery of shareholder damages for a buyer's breach of a merger agreement, the potential consequences to targets in merger transactions would be substantial—shifting the balance of leverage in any MAC, renegotiation, or settlement discussions decidedly to the buyer and effectively making every deal an "option" deal. This ruling, therefore, has left some target counsel struggling to find a way to ensure that the merger agreement allows for the possibility of shareholder damages while also avoiding the adverse consequences of giving shareholders individual enforcement rights as express third-party beneficiaries of the agreement.
The Con Ed case, however, merits a second look. This Article revisits the Con Ed decision and challenges the conclusion of some observers that the court in Con Ed established a general precedent denying the availability of shareholder damages. This Article also discusses how the holding of Con Ed may very well be confined to the facts and the specific language of the merger agreement at issue in the case. Notwithstanding, the uncertainty surrounding how any particular court may approach the issues raised in Con Ed, this Article proposes model contract language that a target might employ to avoid creating a " Con Ed issue" and to minimize the risk of a result that was not intended by the parties.
Report of the Task Force of the ABA Section of Business Law Corporate Governance Committee on Delineation of Governance Roles & Responsibilities
Task Force of the ABA Section of Business Law Corporate Governance Committee on Delineation of Governance Roles & Responsibilities, 65(1): 107–152 (November 2009)
Reinterpreting Section 141(e) of Delaware's General Corporation Law: Why Interested Directors Should Be "Fully Protected" in Relying on Expert Advice
Thomas A. Uebler, 65(4): 1023–1054 (August 2010)
Directors of Delaware corporations often rely on lawyers, economists, investment bankers, professors, and many other experts in order to exercise their managerial power consistently with their fiduciary duties. Such reliance is encouraged by section 141(e) of the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware, which states in part that directors "shall . . . be fully protected" in reasonably relying in good faith on expert advice. Section 141(e) should provide all directors of Delaware corporations a defense to liability if, in their capacity as directors, they reasonably relied in good faith on expert advice but nevertheless produced a transaction that is found to be unfair to the corporation or its stockholders, as long as the unfair aspect of the transaction arose from the expert advice. The Delaware Court of Chancery, however, has limited the full protection of section 141(e) by confining it to disinterested directors in duty of care cases. That limitation, which is not expressed in the statute, unfairly punishes interested directors who act with an honesty of purpose and reasonably rely in good faith on expert advice because it requires them to serve as guarantors of potentially flawed expert advice. This Article concludes that Delaware courts should reconsider the application and effect of section 141(e) and allow directors, regardless of their interest in a challenged transaction, to assert section 141(e) as a defense to liability in duty of care and duty of loyalty cases if they reasonably relied in good faith on expert advice.
The Enforceability and Effectiveness of Typical Shareholders Agreement Provisions
Corporation Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 65(4): 1153–1204 (August 2010)
The SEC and the Financial Industry: Evidence from Enforcement Against Broker-Dealers
Stavros Gadinis, 67(3): 679 - 728 (May 2012)
The Securities and Exchange Commission plays a central part in the U.S. regulatory framework for the supervision of the financial industry. How hasthe SEC carried out this mission? Despite recurrent crises, systematic studies of SEC performance data are surprisingly scarce. As the SEC reforms itself to address the shortcomings revealed in 2007–2008, a systematic examination of the agency’s past record can help identify priorities and evaluate the agency’s renewed efforts. This study takes a first step in studying empirically SEC enforcement against investment banks and brokerage houses, examining the agency’s record in the period right before the 2007–2008 crisis. This data suggests that defendants associated with big firms fared better in SEC enforcement actions as compared to defendants associated with smaller firms in three important dimensions. First, SEC actions against big firms were more likely to involve corporate liability exclusively, with no individuals subject to any regulatory action. Second, big-firm defendants were more likely to end up in administrative rather than court proceedings, controlling for types of violation and levels of harm to investors. Third, within administrative proceedings, big-firm employees were likely to receive lower sanctions, notably temporary or permanent bars from the industry. These patterns have important implications for major debates concerning corporate liability, regulatory capture, and the public and private enforcement of securities laws.
Corporate Short-Termism—In the Boardroom and in the Courtroom
Mark J. Roe, 68(4): 977-1006 (August 2013)
A long-held view in corporate circles has been that furious rapid trading in stock markets has been increasing in recent decades, justifying more judicial measures that shield managers and boards from shareholder influence, so that boards and managers are more free to pursue sensible long-term strategies in their investment and management policies. In this piece, I evaluate the evidence in favor of that view and find it insufficient to justify insulating boards from markets further: several under-analyzed aspects of the American economy and corporate structure are in play, each of which alone could trump a prescription for more board autonomy. The American economy has alternative institutions that mitigate, or reverse, much of any short-term tendencies in public markets; the evidence that the stock market is, net, short-termist is inconclusive; inside-the-corporation labor market difficulties would be exacerbated by further judicial insulation of boards from markets; other institutions are better positioned to deal with any short-term horizons in business than corporate law courts; and the widely held view that short-term trading has increased dramatically in recent decades may over-interpret the data, as the holding duration for major stockholders, such as mutual funds like Fidelity and Vanguard, and major pension funds, does not seem to have shortened and there is unnoticed evidence that the pay duration of the CEO and other executives is shorter than the average stockholders’ duration, calling into question where the structural sources of potential short-termism lie. Overall, system-wide short-termism in public firms is something to watch, but not something that today should affect corporate lawmaking.
Putting Stockholders First, Not the First-Filed Complaint
Leo E. Strine, Jr., Lawrence A. Hamermesh, and Matthew C. Jennejohn, 69(1): 1-78 (November 2013)
The prevalence of settlements in class and derivative litigation challenging mergers and acquisitions in which the only payment is to plaintiffs’ attorneys suggests potential systemic dysfunction arising from the increased frequency of parallel litigation in multiple state courts. After examining possible explanations for that dysfunction and the historical development of doctrines limiting parallel state court litigation—the doctrine of forum non conveniens and the “first-filed” doctrine—this article suggests that those doctrines should be revised to better address shareholder class and derivative litigation. Revisions to the doctrine of forum non conveniens should continue the historical trend, deemphasizing fortuitous and increasingly irrelevant geographic considerations, and should place greater emphasis on voluntary choice of law and the development of precedential guidance by the courts of the state responsible for supplying the chosen law. The “first-filed” rule should be replaced in shareholder representative litigation by meaningful consideration of affected parties’ interests and judicial efficiency.
The Evolving Role of Special Committees in M&A Transactions: Seeking Business Judgment Rule Protection in the Context of Controlling Shareholder Transactions and Other Corporate Transactions Involving Conflicts of Interest
Scott V. Simpson and Katherine Brody, 69(4): 1117-1146 (August 2014)
Special committees of independent, disinterested directors have been widely used by corporate boards to address conflicts of interests and reinforce directors’ satisfaction of their fiduciary duties in corporate transactions since the wave of increased M&A activity in the 1980’s. In 1988, The Business Lawyer published an article titled The Emerging Role of the Special Committee by one of this article’s co-authors, examining the emerging use of special committees of independent directors in transactions involving conflicts of interest. At that time, the Delaware courts had already begun to embrace the emergent and innovative mechanism for addressing corporate conflicts. Now, after over thirty years of scrutiny by the Delaware courts, it is clear that the special committee is a judicially recognized (and encouraged) way to address director conflicts of interest and mitigate litigation risk. This article will examine the role of the special committee in the context of conflict of interest transactions, with a particular focus on transactions involving a change of control or a controlling stockholder, from a U.S. perspective (in particular, under the laws of the State of Delaware), and will briefly consider international applications of the concepts discussed. To this end, this article will examine recent case law developments and compare the special committee processes at the heart of two high-profile Delaware decisions, and, finally, provide guidance to corporate practitioners on the successful implementation of a special committee process.
Harmony or Dissonance? The Good Governance Ideas of Academics and Worldly Players
Robert C. Clark; 70(2): 321-346 (Spring 2015)
This lecture asks questions concerning ideas about what constitutes good corporate governance that are espoused by academics, such as financial economists and law professors, and by more worldly players such as legislators, rule makers, governance rating firms, large institutional investors, law firms that represent corporate clients, and courts. Are there discernible trends and patterns in the views espoused by these different categories of actors, despite all the differences among individual actors within each category? I propose that there are such patterns, offer some initial thoughts about the characteristic themes and differences, and hypothesize about the reasons for the differences. At the end I reflect on what a benign policy maker interested in increasing overall social welfare might do with these observations.
Delaware Courts Continue to Excel in Business Litigation with the Success of the Complex Commercial Litigation Division of the Superior Court
Joseph R. Slights III and Elizabeth A. Powers, 70(4): 1039-1058 (Fall 2015)
Although still in its infancy, the Delaware Superior Court’s Complex Commercial Litigation Division (“CCLD”) has already earned a reputation as a premier business court in keeping with the Delaware judiciary’s tradition of excellence in the resolution of corporate and business controversies. Regarded as an “accent” to the Court of Chancery, the CCLD offers businesses a forum dedicated to the resolution of commercial disputes where equitable jurisdiction is lacking. The CCLD’s collaborative and uniquely flexible approach to the management of complex commercial litigation is a model for what the modern business court should be. Not surprisingly, business litigants have embraced the CCLD, as evidenced by the wide variety of complex commercial disputes that have been filed and adjudicated in this forum. The CCLD continues Delaware’s status as the world’s most respected forum for adjudicating highly complex business disputes.
Judicial Dissolution: Are the Courts of the State that Brought You In the Only Courts that Can Take You Out?
Peter B. Ladig and Kyle Evans Gay; 70(4): 1059-1082 (Fall 2015)
In early 2014, the then-managing members of the limited liability company (“LLC”) that owned The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and philly.com filed nearly simultaneous petitions for judicial dissolution of the LLC in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia and the Delaware Court of Chancery. The dual petitions created the anomaly that everyone agreed on dissolution, but no one could agree where it should take place. Both courts were asked to address a unique question: could a Pennsylvania court judicially dissolve a Delaware LLC? According to existing precedent, the answer was not so clear. This article proposes that the answer should be clear: a court cannot judicially dissolve an entity formed under the laws of another jurisdiction because dissolution is different than other judicial remedies. This approach gives full faith and credit to the legislative acts of the state of formation, but also permits the forum state to protect its own citizens by granting the remedies it feels necessary, short of dissolution.
Death by Auction: Can We Do Better?
Peter B. Ladig; 73(1): 53-84 (Winter 2017/2018)
The purpose of a business divorce is to sever the business relationship between or among the owners of the business. The most common judicial means of achieving this goal is a state dissolution statute. Most state dissolution statutes empower courts to sever the business relationship through various means. Some states even permit the entity or the other equity interests to avoid dissolution by exercising a statutory right to buy out the plaintiff’s interests. Delaware has eschewed this approach, instead providing few statutory directions or options and trusting its Court of Chancery to exercise its equitable discretion appropriately. Delaware courts historically were reluctant to dissolve operating, profi table entities, but in recent years Delaware courts have come to recognize the fallacy of forcing people to continue a business relationship that has fallen apart, and judicial dissolution is no longer the rarity it once was. A continuing problem, however, is that there is little common law guidance on how dissolution should be accomplished in a manner that is consistent with principles of Delaware law and that also recognizes the unique nature of these kinds of business divorces. In the absence of such guidance, Delaware courts default to what they know: an auction or sale process designed to attract the most number of bidders to maximize the entity’s value. This article suggests that the Court of Chancery should not consider an auction or other public sale process to be the default solution, that general principles of equity permit the Court of Chancery to grant many of the statutory remedies available in other states, and that a forced public sale should be the remedy of last resort.
Asking the Right Question: The Statutory Right of Appraisal and Efficient Markets
Jonathan Macey and Joshua Mitts, 74(4): 1015-1064
(Fall 2019)
In this article, we make several contributions to the literature on appraisal rights and similar cases in which courts assign values to a company’s shares in the litigation context. First, we applaud the recent trend in Delaware cases to consider the market prices of the stock of the company being valued if that stock trades in an efficient market, and we defend this market-oriented methodology against claims that recent discoveries in behavioral finance indicate that share prices are unreliable due to various cognitive biases. Next, we propose that the framework and methodology for utilizing market prices be clarified. We maintain that courts should look at the market price of the securities of a target company whose shares are being valued, unadjusted for the news of the merger, rather than at the deal price that was reached by the parties in the transaction.
Through the Decades: The Development of Business Courts in the United States of America
Lee Applebaum, Mitchell Bach, Eric Milby, and Richard L. Renck, 75(3): 2053-2076 (Summer 2020)
This article interprets the meaning of the term “business court” as it has developed through the variety of implementations and describes the successful development, and occasional failure, of those courts across the country.
Essay: The ABA’s Contribution to the Development of Business Courts in the United States
Christopher P. Yates, 75(3): 2077-2084 (Summer 2020)
More than a quarter-century ago, the ABA Business Law Section made a commitment to the development of business courts across the United States. From the formation of its Ad Hoc Committee on Business Courts in 1994 through the engagement with state officials and business-court judges for more than two decades, the Section has become a driving force behind the adoption and refinement of the business-court concept by an overwhelming majority of the states. In this article, the innovators and champions of business courts who took up the cause on behalf of the Section tell the story of how the Section played a central role in the success of business-court initiatives and how the Section works diligently today to maintain and build upon that success.