Last week, the Delaware Court of Chancery held – In re Volcano Corp. Stockholder Litig. – held that the acceptance of a first-step tender offer by fully informed, disinterested, uncoerced stockholders representing a majority of a corporation’s outstanding shares in a two-step merger under Section 251(h) of the Delaware General Corporation Law had the same cleansing effect as a fully informed, uncoerced vote of a majority of the disinterested stockholders of a target in a merger. In other words, a third-party, cash-out merger accomplished through a fully informed tender offer will be governed by the business judgment standard of review, requiring dismissal of all litigation challenges to the transaction unless a plaintiff can establish corporate waste. Upon the receipt of the required tendered shares, the business judgment rule “irrebuttably” applied to the merger and the plaintiff could only challenge it on the basis that it constituted waste.
We’re posting memos in our “Fiduciary Duties” Practice Area. As one of the memos notes, the decision extends an important line of recent Delaware case law that substantially inoculates transactions other than controlling stockholder squeeze-out mergers from litigation challenge so long as they have been approved by a majority of the independent shares outstanding on the basis of proper disclosure.
T. Rowe Price Group Inc. shareholders are getting some of their money back after a proxy voting blunder cost the mutual-fund company nearly $200 million. Dell Inc. will pay T. Rowe about $25 million to settle a long-running lawsuit over the technology giant’s buyout, according to people familiar with the matter.
That is a fraction of the almost $200 million T. Rowe would have received had it not accidentally voted in favor of the 2013 deal. A Delaware judge ruled last month that founder Michael Dell and his private-equity backers underpaid for the company and ordered them to repay dissenting investors — a windfall that T. Rowe was ineligible for. In exchange, T. Rowe has agreed not to appeal a series of unfavorable court rulings that disqualified it from a larger payday, the people said.
On June 16, 2016, Delaware Governor Jack Markell signed into law House Bill 371, which amends the Delaware General Corporation Law (DGCL) with respect to, among other things, appraisal proceedings and “intermediate-form” mergers.
Specifically, the bill amends Section 262 of the DGCL to limit de minimis appraisal claims and to provide surviving corporations with the right to pay stockholders exercising appraisal rights prior to the time the Delaware Court of Chancery makes a final value determination, thereby limiting the amount of interest that would accrue on an appraisal award.
The legislation also clarifies the requirements and procedures relating to “intermediate-form” mergers under Section 251(h) of the DGCL, particularly those involving rollover of target equity.
Yesterday, the entire board of directors of FBR & Co. was overwhelmingly re-elected in the face of a bitter proxy fight waged by Voce Capital Management, an activist hedge fund. Voce committed strategic and tactical errors, costing its investors significant amounts of money, and unwittingly providing valuable lessons on responding to dissident shareholders.
In 2015, Voce and its affiliates purchased approximately 5% of FBR’s outstanding common stock. Consistent with FBR’s commitment to regular dialogue with its shareholders, FBR attempted on several occasions to solicit input from Voce. Voce did not provide any meaningful suggestions for improvements and instead, after a brief series of initial conversations, elected not to engage with the company for a period of almost five months.
After the protracted silence, surprisingly Voce nominated three candidates for election to FBR’s board and commenced a vitriolic and highly-charged proxy campaign. Voce’s campaign was noteworthy for its repeated unsupported attacks which demonstrated a fundamental lack of knowledge of, and sensitivity to, the people-intensive nature of a financial institution. Voce had no concern for the highly skilled professionals whose talents are required to operate an investment banking and broker-dealer business. Despite the lack of merit to its arguments or a coherent business strategy, Voce received the support of ISS and Glass Lewis.
The management and board of FBR wisely elected not to sink to Voce’s level. Voce issued numerous highly inflammatory “fight letters”, planted critical news stories in trade and other publications and provided misleading information as to the state of the voting to shareholders. FBR responded by taking the high road, it did not issue attack letters or commence litigation, rather it professionally and analytically presented its plans to shareholders.
Voce further evidenced its lack of commitment to its position by the fact that none of the Voce nominees or principals of the fund attended the FBR shareholder meeting and Voce’s representatives chose to forego the time allotted to them to address the meeting. The very next day Voce sold its shares of FBR common stock at a significant loss. Voce had purchased its position in FBR at a volume weighted average price of $22.37 per share and sold its shares for $16.40 per share. In addition to the loss on the position, the Voce investors will bear Voce’s fees and expenses.
FBR was successful not only because of Voce’s numerous failings but also because the FBR management team had spent years engaging with its retail and institutional shareholders. As a result when shareholders were presented with a choice between an activist running a destructive campaign and management’s clear strategy, they overwhelmingly supported the current FBR board. This campaign illustrates that careful shareholder engagement over many years can counteract the results of a negative campaign and reflexive ISS and Glass Lewis recommendations of activists.
Some great stuff in these takeaways from a recent Cleary Gottlieb/Berkeley event in San Francisco about “Antitrust, IP, Board Processes, and M&A in 2016: Challenges and Conundrums for the West Coast”…
In a decision with important consequences for merger and acquisition transactions and the litigation resulting from those transactions, a divided New York Court of Appeals held last week that the common interest doctrine applies only to post-signing, pre-closing communications between parties to a merger agreement if they relate to pending or anticipated litigation. Other communications between separately represented parties to a merger (or other commercial transaction) are not entitled to privilege under New York law.
The law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz has criticized the decision for forcing a buyer to pay a 30 percent higher price in a “fully shopped” deal. According to the law firm, this decision may lead to shareholders’ “losing out” as private equity firms fear to do deals and hedge funds seek to win big on appraisal awards. My DealBook colleague Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote that the decision was “likely to lead to a spate of lawsuits and second-guessing over the price of the next big mergers and acquisitions.” Matt Levine at Bloomberg View criticized the opinion’s methodology for its reliance on Dell being the only one willing to pay this price in the marketplace and moreover willing to take the risk of taking the company private.
Much of the criticism has centered on the fact that the Delaware judge — in deciding that the fair value of Dell shares was $17.62 a share, far above the $13.65 paid by the buyout consortium led by the company’s founder, Michael S. Dell — found that there was no significant fault with the conduct of the company’s directors and that no other bidder had emerged for Dell shares.
So should we be worried that this decision will change buyouts? The answer is probably no, because of the deeply weird nature of appraisal and this case.
According to this “ELM Trends: 2015 Year-End Report,” the largest law firms continue to command the lion’s share of the market for high value M&A work – with M&A fees more than doubled in 2015 with year-over-year increases since 2012.
Here are highlights from the study:
– 99 percent of all M&A matters billed are by the hour. Of those, 72 percent were handled by a large firm. M&A work continues to be partner intensive with a quarter of all transactions handled by a partner since 2011.
– The overall blended rate on M&A matters ($450) is the highest among the study’s matter categories and exhibits one of the largest increases on a three-year basis. At the high end of the M&A billing scale, some partners increased rates by as much as 9% on a three-year CAGR basis.
– A majority of clients (56%) are forgoing hiring outside firms for their legal work. For M&A work just 31 percent of corporate clients willing to hire a new firm for this type of work.
– By contrast, clients are willing to hire new outside firms for just two specific types of legal work—litigation and corporate:
o 57% of companies with significant litigation hired a new firm in 2015 and used more law firms (between five and 27), to handle their litigation matters than any other type of work.
o 46% of companies with significant corporate work also hired new outside firms.
– While AFA use continues to grow modestly, AFAs for commodity work such as Employment and Labor grew from 14.1% to 17.3%.
– Three major cities, in particular, show rate growth of more than 4.0% both over the last year and year-over-year: Boston (8% YOY), Chicago (5.5% YOY and Washington, D.C. (4.3% (YOY).