Business Divorce

Business Divorce

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.