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The Modigliani-Miller Theorem At 60: The Long-Overlooked Legal Applications Of Finance’S Foundational Theorem, Michael S. Knoll
The Modigliani-Miller Theorem At 60: The Long-Overlooked Legal Applications Of Finance’S Foundational Theorem, Michael S. Knoll
All Faculty Scholarship
2018 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller’s The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance, and the Theory of Investment. Widely hailed as the foundation of modern finance, their article, which purports to demonstrate that a firm’s value is independent of its capital structure, is little known by lawyers, including legal academics. That is unfortunate because the Modigliani-Miller capital structure irrelevancy proposition (when inverted) provides a framework that can be extremely useful to legal academics, practicing attorneys and judges.
The New Bond Workouts, William W. Bratton, Adam J. Levitin
The New Bond Workouts, William W. Bratton, Adam J. Levitin
All Faculty Scholarship
Bond workouts are a famously dysfunctional method of debt restructuring, ridden with opportunistic and coercive behavior by bondholders and bond issuers. Yet since 2008 bond workouts have quietly started to work. A cognizable portion of the restructuring market has shifted from bankruptcy court to out-of-court workouts by way of exchange offers made only to large institutional investors. The new workouts feature a battery of strong-arm tactics by bond issuers, and aggrieved bondholders have complained in court. The result has been a new, broad reading of the primary law governing workouts, section 316(b) of the Trust Indenture Act of 1939 (“TIA”), …
Appraisal Arbitrage And Shareholder Value, Scott Callahan, Darius Palia, Eric L. Talley
Appraisal Arbitrage And Shareholder Value, Scott Callahan, Darius Palia, Eric L. Talley
Faculty Scholarship
Post-merger appraisal rights have been the focus of heated controversy within mergers and acquisitions circles in recent years. Traditionally perceived as an arcane and cabalistic proceeding, the appraisal action has recently come to occupy center stage through the ascendancy of appraisal arbitrage — whereby investors purchase target-company shares shortly after an announcement principally to pursue appraisal. Such strategies became more feasible and profitable a decade ago, on the heels of two seemingly technocratic reforms in Delaware: (i) the statutory codification of pre-judgment interest, pegging a presumptive rate at five percent above the federal discount rate; and (ii) the Transkaryotic opinion, …