DealLawyers.com Blog

August 27, 2015

HSR “Investment-Only” Exemption: Lessons from Third Point’s Yahoo! Investment

Here’s the intro from this Cooley memo:

While acquisitions of up to 10% of the voting interest in a target that are made “solely for the purpose of investment” are in many circumstances exempt from Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) reporting requirements, even when the value of the investment exceeds the $76.3 million HSR “size of transaction” threshold, federal antitrust authorities have long interpreted that “exemption” to be a narrow one.1

The Department of Justice this week sued three affiliated hedge funds and their New York-based management company for acquiring shares in Yahoo! in 2011, in excess of the then applicable HSR threshold, and simultaneously agreed to settle the action, prohibiting future violations, without obtaining any civil penalty. The suit sends a clear message to investors that taking actions other than voting shares likely takes an investment out of the exemption.

The Complaint, which was filed on behalf of a divided Federal Trade Commission, targets actions taken by Third Point LLC in connection with its acquisition of voting securities in Yahoo!. By late August 2011, three Third Point funds each had Yahoo! holdings exceeding the then applicable $66 million size-of-transaction threshold. On September 16, 2011, the three funds each filed a notification and report form under the HSR Act for the voting securities purchased, and the waiting period of those filings expired on October 17, 2011. Notwithstanding this filing, the DOJ alleged that the funds were in violation of the HSR Act from the point in August when they had each acquired shares putting their holdings above $66 million until the expiration of the waiting period in October 2011, given that they engaged in “various actions inconsistent with [qualifying for] an investment-only purpose” exemption.