Law Commons^™

Antitrust For Dominant Digital Platforms: An Alternative To The Monopoly Power Standard To Restore Competition, Jordan Ramsey

Senior Honors Theses

Antitrust law is meant to promote competition by prohibiting anticompetitive business practices such as mergers and acquisitions as well as exclusionary conduct. Judicial interpretation of antitrust law has allowed dominant digital platforms to undertake anticompetitive actions without prosecution. The Sherman Antitrust Act should be amended to remove the monopoly power standard that allows firms to engage in anticompetitive conduct as long as the conduct does not create or uphold monopoly power. The amendment would make anticompetitive conduct illegal regardless of monopoly power, as long as six proof requirements are met. This would result in lessened market concentration, which would benefit …

Why Do Corporations Merge And Why Should Law Care?, Chris Sagers

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Mergers and acquisitions are extraordinarily prevalent in the United States, generating massive expenditures every year. However, a serious empirical puzzle lies at the heart of all that activity. That empirical phenomenon's most remarkable feature by far is that even though it is well established in an extensive literature and implies far-reaching policy consequences, American law ignores it entirely.

Generations of researchers have failed to find evidence that merger and acquisition activity generates any lasting benefits for the combining firms' owners or anyone else. No one seriously doubts that efficiencies of scale or technological integration are real or that acquisitions sometimes …

The Value Of Fiduciary Duties: Evidence From En Bloc Sales In Singapore, Jianfeng Hu, Kelvin F. K. Low, Wei Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the impact of fiduciary duties on collective asset sales in the case of owners acting as delegates for other owners, thereby potentially inducing conflicts of interests. Our identification strategy exploits a unique legal shock in Singapore, which established fiduciary duties in those transactions in the real estate market known colloquially as en bloc sales. The imposition of fiduciary duties caused the price premium of units sold via en bloc sales to increase over units ineligible for en bloc sale, as well as over units that, although eligible for en bloc sale, are sold individually. In addition, this …

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (Spacs) And The Sec, Neal Newman, Lawrence J. Trautman

Faculty Scholarship

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are simply enterprises that raise money from the public with the intention of purchasing an existing business and becoming publicly traded in the securities markets. If the SPAC is successful in raising money and the acquisition takes place, the target company takes the SPAC’s place on a stock exchange in a transaction that resembles a public offering. Also known as “blank-check” or “reverse merger” companies, this process avoids many of the pitfalls of a traditional initial public offering.

During late 2020 and 2021 an unprecedented surge in the popularity and issuance of Special Purpose Acquisition …

Anticompetitive Merger Review, Samuel N. Weinstein

Faculty Articles

U.S. antitrust law empowers enforcers to review pending mergers that might undermine competition. But there is growing evidence that the merger-review regime is failing to perform its core procompetitive function. Industry concentration and the power of dominant firms are increasing across key sectors of the economy. In response, progressive advocates of more aggressive antitrust interventions have critiqued the substantive merger-review standard, arguing that it is too friendly to merging firms. This Article traces the problem to a different source: the merger-review process itself. The growing length of reviews, the competitive restrictions merger agreements place on acquisition targets during review, and …

Law School News: Staff Person Of The Year 2021: Ann Marie Thompson 05/18/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Staff Person Of The Year: Ann Marie Thompson 05-12-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

What A Technical Services Librarian Wants Their Library Director To Know, Georgia Briscoe

Publications

Promoting the value of technical services librarians in the digital age.

Does Shareholder Voting Matter? Evidence From The Takeover Market, Paul Mason, Usha Rodrigues, Mike Stegemoller, Steven Utke

Scholarly Works

Voting rights are a basic shareholder-protection mechanism. Outside of the core voting requirements state law imposes (election of directors and votes on fundamental changes), federal law grants shareholders additional voting rights. But these rights introduce concomitant costs into corporate governance. Each grant of a voting right thus invites the question: is the benefit achieved worth the cost the vote imposes?

The question is not merely a theoretical one. Recently the SEC, concerned about Nasdaq’s potential weakening of shareholder voting protections, has lamented that little evidence exists on the value of the shareholder vote. This Article provides that evidence. It examines …

The Shifting Tides Of Merger Litigation, Randall Thomas, Matthew D. Cain, Jill Fisch, Steven D. Solomon

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In 2015, Delaware made several important changes to its laws concerning merger litigation. These changes, which were made in response to a perception that levels of merger litigation were too high and that a substantial proportion of merger cases were not providing value, raised the bar, making it more difficult for plaintiffs to win a lawsuit challenging a merger and more difficult for plaintiffs’ counsel to collect a fee award. We study what has happened in the courts in response to these changes. We find that the initial effect of the changes has been to decrease the volume of merger …

The Shifting Tides Of Merger Litigation, Matthew D. Cain, Jill E. Fisch, Steven Davidoff Solomon, Randall S. Thomas

All Faculty Scholarship

In 2015, Delaware made several important changes to its laws concerning merger litigation. These changes, which were made in response to a perception that levels of merger litigation were too high and that a substantial proportion of merger cases were not providing value, raised the bar, making it more difficult for plaintiffs to win a lawsuit challenging a merger and more difficult for plaintiffs’ counsel to collect a fee award.

We study what has happened in the courts in response to these changes. We find that the initial effect of the changes has been to decrease the volume of merger …

Buying Monopoly: Antitrust Limits On Damages For Externally Acquired Patents, Erik N. Hovenkamp, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The “monopoly” authorized by the Patent Act refers to the exclusionary power of individual patents. That is not the same thing as the acquisition of individual patent rights into portfolios that dominate a market, something that the Patent Act never justifies and that the antitrust laws rightfully prohibit.

Most patent assignments are procompetitive and serve to promote the efficient commercialization of patented inventions. However, patent acquisitions may also be used to combine substitute patents from external patentees, giving the acquirer an unearned monopoly position in the relevant technology market. A producer requires only one of the substitutes, but by acquiring …

O Estado Atual Dos E-Books Em Bibliotecas Jurídicas Dos Estados Unidos: Uma Pesquisa, Wilhelmina Randtke, Stacy Fowler

Faculty Articles

Rising prices for print legal materials have caused an accelerated shift to acquisitions exclusively in electronic format. This study reports results of a survey of U.S. law libraries regarding indexing of electronic materials, including cataloging practices and other ways of making electronic materials available to and discoverable by patrons. This is a reprint of The Current State of E-Books in U.S. Law Libraries: A Survey, 108 Law Libr. J. 361 (2016), translated into Portuguese.

Incorporating Legal Claims, Maya Steinitz

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in commercial litigation funding. Whereas the judicial, legislative, and scholarly treatment of litigation finance has regarded litigation finance first and foremost as a form of champerty and sought to regulate it through rules of legal professional responsibility (hereinafter, the "legal ethics paradigm"), this Article suggests that the problems created by litigation finance are all facets of the classic problems created by "the separation of ownership and control" that have been a focus of business law since the advent of the corporate form. Therefore, an "incorporation paradigm," offered here, is more appropriate. "Incorporating …

Tax And Corporate Governance: The Influence Of Tax On Managerial Agency Costs, David M. Schizer

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines the influence of tax on managerial agency costs, with particular emphasis on public companies in the United States. Focusing on “C-corporations,” this chapter first considers why tax is an imperfect vehicle for mitigating managerial agency costs. It then discusses how tax influences the compensation of managers, both in ways policy makers intended, and in ways they did not. The chapter also considers how tax affects management decisions about capital structure, hedging, and acquisitions. In addition, this chapter explores the tax system’s influence on the ability and incentives of shareholders to monitor management. This chapter then concludes with …

A More Critical Use Of Fairness Opinions As A Practical Approach To The Behavioral Economics Of Mergers And Acquisitions, Joan Macleod Heminway

Scholarly Works

This paper responds to Professor Donald C. Langevoort's essay entitled "The Behavioral Economics of Mergers and Acquisitions" (12 Transactions: Tenn. J. Bus. L. 65 (2011)). Together with Professor Langevoort's essay and another responsive work written from the standpoint of behavioral psychology – Eric Sundstrom's "Tall Steps, Slippery Slopes & Learning Curves in the Behavioral Economics of Mergers & Acquisitions" (12 Transactions: Tenn. J. Bus. L. 65 (2011)) – this paper preliminarily explores solutions to behavioral issues in the context of mergers and acquisitions.

Specifically, this paper contends that changes in the contents, construction, use, and assessment of fairness opinions may …

Slides: U.S. Shale Gas: Resources, Reserves And $$$, John B. Curtis

Shale Plays in the Intermountain West: Legal and Policy Issues (November 12)

Presenter: John B. Curtis, Professor of Geology and Geological Engineering and Director of the Potential Gas Agency, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO

17 slides

Federal Interventions In Private Enterprise In The United States: Their Genesis In And Effects On Corporate Finance Instruments And Transactions, Joan Macleod Heminway

Scholarly Works

In response to U.S. corporate failures involved in the current global financial crisis, traditional corporate finance vehicles and tools were widely used in new ways and for new purposes. Of course, one object of the U.S. government’s investment and intervention in, and exercise of influence over, private enterprise during the crisis was to provide for or ensure the provision of adequate capital funding. But its investment, intervention, and influence also represented a new way to oversee and otherwise regulate key business enterprises in the financial services and automotive sectors. This Article reviews certain aspects of the use of preferred stock, …

Acquiring Innovation, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Articles

In recent years, the innovation market has witnessed a new business model involving companies that are mere patent holding shells and not operating entities. They have no customers or products to offer, but they do have an aggressive tactic of using patent portfolios to threaten other operating companies with potential infringement litigation. The strategy is executed with the end goal of extracting handsome settlements. Acquisitions of patents for offensive use have become a major concern to operating companies because such acquisitions pose the threats of patent injunction, interrupting the business and crippling further innovation.

While many operating companies today know …

Investment Banks As Fiduciaries: Implications For Conflicts Of Interest, Andrew F. Tuch

Scholarship@WashULaw

Investment banks play an intermediary role in the financial system that is integral to its efficient operation. A core, and highly visible, part of their work involves providing financial advisory services to institutional clients on transactions that have strategic importance, such as mergers and acquisitions. As these services are but one aspect of the broad and diverse range of financial services that investment banks typically provide, challenges such as conflicts of interest inevitably arise. Somewhat anomalously, the question of whether these firms owe fiduciary duties to their clients when providing financial advisory services has received little regulatory, judicial or scholarly …

Fair Value And Fair Price In Corporate Acquisitions, Rutheford B. Campbell Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In statutory corporate acquisitions, dissenters' rights entitle shareholders of acquired corporations to obtain a "fair value" for their consideration, while common-law fiduciary duties ensure that such shareholders receive a "fair price" in the transaction. Courts, however, have had difficulty defining and measuring fair value and fair price, leaving this area of the law in disarray. This Article reviews the current framework of appraisal rights and fiduciary duties and proposes refined definitions of fair value and fair price that are based on attractive moral and economic values widely shared by society. The proposal respects the expectations of shareholders and provides guidance …

Federal Income Tax Considerations Of Acquisitions Involving S Corporations, Mary L. Harmon

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Rule 145: Mergers, Acquisitions And Recapitalizations Under The Securities Act Of 1933, Rutheford B. Campbell Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The most significant occurrence surrounding the adoption of Rule 145 was the repeal by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Rule 133, the conceptually deficient “no sale” rule that had perplexed commentators for years. In Rule 133, the Commission took the position that no offer or sale of a security was involved when, for example, a shareholder of a company to be acquired in a merger (an “acquired company”) voted whether to authorize the merger of the acquired company into an acquiring company (an “acquiring company”) in exchange for stock in the acquiring company. The purpose of this Article is …

Legal Factors In The Acquisition Of A United State Corporation: Litigation By Hostile Targets, Johan E. Droogmans

LLM Theses and Essays

Acquisitions of United States corporations have become increasingly complex takeover contests, where bidders and target corporations are forced into offensive and defensive litigation strategies to protect their respective interests. Targets often assert that the bidders have violated federal or state securities laws, federal antitrust laws, federal margin regulations, federal and state regulatory systems, and federal anti-racketeering laws. These lawsuits are primarily based on the principal federal regulation of takeovers in section 14(a) of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 and the Williams Act. Target litigation is customary, but entails certain disadvantages; a lawsuit rarely stops an offer, is expensive, …

Government Enforcement Policy Of Section 7 Of The Clayton Act: Carte Blanche For Conglomerate Mergers?, Joseph P. Bauer

Journal Articles

This Article argues that the Department of Justice's recently articulated enforcement intentions with respect to conglomerate mergers are inconsistent with the case law applying section 7 of the Clayton Act to these transactions and also represent unsound policy. Part I will review the conglomerate merger jurisprudence of the past two decades - looking at the theories that have been used to challenge them, at the important judicial decisions interpreting and applying those theories, and at the Guidelines adopted by the Department of Justice in 1968 to codify these developments. It will then briefly discuss certain developments regarding conglomerate mergers the …

Accounting For Mergers, Acquisitions And Investments, In A Nutshell: The Interrelationships Of, And Criteria For, Purchase Or Pooling, The Equity Method, And Parent-Company-Only And Consolidated Statements, Ted J. Fiflis

Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Selection And Acquisitions: Comments And Annotated Bibliography, Betty W. Taylor, William W. Gaunt

UF Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.