Yearly Archives: 2013

Checklist for Successful Acquisitions in the U.S.

Posted by Adam O. Emmerich, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, on
Thursday, January 24, 2013
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Adam Emmerich is a partner in the corporate department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz focusing primarily on mergers and acquisitions and securities law matters. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton firm memorandum by Mr. Emmerich, Robin Panovka, and other partners of Wachtell Lipton.

More than 40% of global M&A in 2012 involved acquirors and targets in different countries, including $170 billion of acquisitions in the U.S. by non-U.S. acquirors. Given the continuing accumulation of U.S. Dollars in emerging economies, many expect the trend to continue as Dollars are re-invested in the U.S. Natural resources will continue to be an important part of this story, including in the U.S., where substantial non-U.S. investment has been an important trend, as well as in resource-rich developed nations such as Canada and Australia, where non-domestic investment has lately been highly controversial.

Despite the empty election-year protectionist rhetoric in the U.S. last year, and continuing global concern over access to resources and technology by non-domestic actors, U.S. deal markets continue to be some of the most hospitable markets to off-shore acquirors and investors. With careful advance preparation, strategically thoughtful implementation and sophisticated deal structures that anticipate likely concerns, most acquisitions in the U.S. can be successfully achieved. Cross-border deals involving investment into the U.S. are more likely to fail because of poor planning and execution rather than fundamental legal or political restrictions.

Following is our updated checklist of issues that should be carefully considered in advance of an acquisition or strategic investment in the United States. Because each cross-border deal is different, the relative significance of the issues discussed below will depend upon the specific facts, circumstances and dynamics of each particular situation:

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2012 Year-End Securities Enforcement Update

Posted by Mark K. Schonfeld, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, on
Thursday, January 24, 2013
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Mark Schonfeld is a litigation partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and co-chair of the firm’s Securities Enforcement Practice Group. This post is based on a Gibson Dunn client alert by Mr. Schonfeld and Kenneth J. Burke; the full version, including footnotes, is available here.

In many respects, 2012 was another year of aggressive SEC enforcement. The SEC’s Division of Enforcement again logged a near record number of enforcement actions. More important, the cases reflected a marked increase in the number and proportion of actions against registered investment advisers and broker-dealers, and their associated persons. This increased focus derives from a culmination of factors, including Enforcement’s creation of specialized units for the asset management industry and for structured products, the hiring of industry experts, and the close collaboration between staff from Enforcement and the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (“OCIE”). With the expansion of the registered private fund adviser population under financial reform legislation, and the launch of an initiative to conduct focused, risk-based examinations of these new registrants, this trend will likely continue for the foreseeable future.

At the same time, in the latter half of 2012 the SEC confronted significant challenges in litigating previously filed enforcement actions against individuals in cases related to the financial crisis. Whether these cases will cause the SEC to reevaluate its approach with respect to charging decisions in the future is unknown. However, in the short term, Enforcement seems undeterred by individual litigation results in its pursuit of continued enforcement actions.

The last six months of 2012 mark the beginning of another transition for the SEC generally, and for Enforcement in particular. As the year drew to a close, Mary Schapiro announced her departure as Chairman, followed by several division directors. Most notably, on January 9, 2013, the SEC announced that Robert Khuzami would step down as Director of Enforcement. As we look ahead to 2013, a new leadership team at the SEC and in Enforcement will seek to make their own imprint on the SEC’s priorities and processes. In addition, as more time has passed since the depth of the financial crisis, Enforcement’s priorities will shift to more recent conduct and emerging industry risks.

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“Don’t Ask, Don’t Waive Standstills” Revisited (Rapidly)

Posted by Trevor Norwitz, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
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Trevor Norwitz is a partner in the Corporate Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he focuses on mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and securities law matters. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton firm memorandum by Mr. Norwitz, Igor Kirman, and William Savitt. This post is part of the Delaware law series, which is cosponsored by the Forum and Corporation Service Company; links to other posts in the series are available here.

In a second Chancery transcript ruling on the subject in recent weeks, Chancellor Leo E. Strine, Jr. has made clear that Delaware has no per se rule against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Waive” standstill provisions (which prohibit a party subject to a standstill, including a losing bidder in an auction, from requesting a waiver from its standstill obligations). The Chancellor also provided guidance for using such a provision as an “auction gavel” to secure the best price reasonably available to a target company involved in a sales process. The ruling in In Re Ancestry.com is a welcome clarification that will help maintain the vitality of auctions where a target wants to incentivize bidders to come forth with their highest bid.

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Corporate Governance and Value Creation

Posted by Viral Acharya, New York University, on
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
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Viral Acharya is a Professor of Finance at New York University.

In the paper, Corporate Governance and Value Creation: Evidence from Private Equity, forthcoming in the Review of Financial Studies, my co-authors (Oliver Gottschalg, Moritz Hahn, and Conor Kehoe) and I attempt to bridge two strands of literature concerning PE, the first of which analyzes the operating performance of acquired companies, and the second that analyzes fund IRRs. In addition, we investigate how human capital factors are associated with value creation in PE deals. We focus on the following questions: (i) Are the returns to equity investments by large, mature PE houses simply due to financial leverage and luck or market timing from investing in well-performing sectors, or do these returns represent the value created at the enterprise level in the so-called portfolio companies, over and above the value created by the quoted sector peers? (ii) What is the effect of ownership by large, mature PE houses on the operating performance of portfolio companies relative to that of quoted peers, and how does this operating performance relate to the financial value created (if any) by these houses? (iii) Are there any distinguishing characteristics based on the background and experience of PE houses or partners involved in a deal that are best associated with value creation?

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2012 Annual Corporate Governance Review

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
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The following post comes to us from David Drake, President of Georgeson Inc, and is based on the executive summary of Georgeson’s 2012 Annual Corporate Governance Review; the full publication is available for download here.

The Rise of Engagement in the 2012 Proxy Season

For many years Georgeson’s Annual Corporate Governance Review has promoted the concept of engagement between public companies and their institutional investors. While Georgeson has noticed increased engagement, the nature of the engagement has generally been incremental and devoted to specific governance and compensation issues from year to year. After years of this slow, incremental growth, the 2012 proxy season became the Year of Engagement and witnessed a marked increase in company/shareholder interaction — engagement that was not limited to a few days out of the five- or six-week period between the mailing of the corporate proxy statement and the last days of a proxy solicitation campaign prior to the annual meeting. The types of issues discussed leading up to and during the 2012 proxy season ranged from executive compensation and board structure to negotiations with proponents over the potential withdrawal of shareholder-sponsored ballot resolutions to just open-ended discussions to understand each other better. The voting statistics contained between these covers cannot fully measure that activity — although they do make it clear that the level of communication was more frequent and intense than in the past.

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Putting Stockholders First, Not the First-Filed Complaint

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Leo E. Strine, Jr., Senior Fellow for the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance and Austin Wakeman Scott Lecturer at Harvard Law School, Lawrence A. Hamermesh, Ruby R. Vale Professor of Corporate and Business Law at Widener University School of Law, and Matthew Jennejohn, an associate at Shearman & Sterling, LLP.

The prevalence of settlements in class and derivative litigation challenging mergers and acquisitions in which the only payment is to plaintiffs’ attorneys suggests potential systemic dysfunction arising from the increased frequency of parallel litigation in multiple state courts. After examining possible explanations for that dysfunction, and the historical development of doctrines limiting parallel state court litigation — the doctrine of forum non conveniens and the “first-filed” doctrine — this paper suggests that those doctrines should be revised to better address shareholder class and derivative litigation. Revisions to the doctrine of forum non conveniens should continue the historical trend, deemphasizing fortuitous and increasingly irrelevant geographic considerations, and should place greater emphasis on voluntary choice of law and the development of precedential guidance by the courts of the state responsible for supplying the chosen law. The “first-filed” rule should be replaced in shareholder representative litigation by meaningful consideration of affected parties’ interests and judicial efficiency.

Putting Stockholders First responds to the observation that in 2011, only 5% of settlements of shareholder litigation challenging mergers and acquisitions involved an additional payout to stockholders, 84% of such settlements were based on additional disclosure only, but all of such settlements involved payment of fees for plaintiffs’ attorneys. These figures reflect a significant change from 1999 to 2000, when 52% of suits filed on behalf of shareholders produced a financial benefit for the class, and only 10% of settlements were “disclosure-only.”

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January 2013 Davis Polk Dodd-Frank Progress Report

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, January 21, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Margaret E. Tahyar and Gabriel D. Rosenberg of the Financial Institutions Group at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. This post discusses a Davis Polk report, which is available here. A post about the previous progress report is available here. Other posts about the Dodd-Frank Act are available here.

This posting, the January 2013 Davis Polk Dodd-Frank Progress Report, is one in a series of Davis Polk presentations that illustrate graphically the progress of the rulemaking work that has been done and is yet to occur under the Dodd-Frank Act. The Progress Report has been prepared using data from the Davis Polk Regulatory Tracker™, an online subscription service offered by Davis Polk to help market participants understand the Dodd-Frank Act and follow regulatory developments on a real-time basis.

In this report:

  • As of January 2, 2013, a total of 237 Dodd-Frank rulemaking requirement deadlines have passed. Of these 237 passed deadlines, 142 (59.9%) have been missed and 95 (40.1%) have been met with finalized rules.
  • In addition, 136 (34.2%) of the 398 total required rulemakings have been finalized, while 129 (32.4%) rulemaking requirements have not yet been proposed.
  • Rulemaking activity this month included an SEC final rule on requirements to search for lost securityholders and notification requirements with respect to unresponsive payees. The Federal Reserve released a proposed rule on enhanced prudential standards and early remediation requirements for foreign banking organizations and foreign nonbank financial companies.

Matching Directors with Firms

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, January 21, 2013
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The following post comes to us from David Denis, Professor of Finance at the Katz School of Business, University of Pittsburgh; Diane Denis, Professor of Finance at the Katz School of Business, University of Pittsburgh; and Mark Walker, Associate Professor of Finance at the Poole College of Management, North Carolina State University.

Although the structure of the board of directors has been the topic of considerable debate and academic research over the past two decades, much of this prior literature focuses on aggregate measures of board composition such as board size or the fraction of independent outside directors. More recent studies recognize that directors with differing backgrounds and expertise are likely to bring different sources of value to the board. However, empirical studies of the importance of these attributes are limited by the ‘stickiness’ of board structures. Specifically, transactions costs associated with board structure adjustments can result in board structures that evolve only very slowly. As a result, observing board structures and their determinants at any given point in time can provide a misleading picture of how boards are formed; most notably, how and why particular individual directors are matched with the specific set of assets that they help govern.

In our paper, Matching Directors with Firms: Evidence from Board Structure Following Corporate Spinoffs, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we aim to overcome some of these limitations by analyzing board structure following corporate spinoffs. As part of the spinoff, a board of directors must be created from scratch for the spun off unit. This ‘de novo’ feature provides a unique opportunity to observe boards that are unlikely to be affected by the factors that contribute to the ‘stickiness’ of ongoing boards. In addition, the separation of one publicly traded firm into two publicly-traded firms leads to large discrete differences in asset and operating structure and significant variation in CEO identity and origin. This allows us to examine both the formation of new boards by the spun off units and the changes in parent board structure occasioned by a significant operational restructuring. Perhaps more importantly, our experimental design allows us to link specific assets with specific directors, thereby providing unique evidence on how directors are matched with the assets they govern. Similarly, by tracking the movement of individual CEOs and individual directors, our data can enhance our understanding of the extent to which individual directors are matched with specific CEOs.

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Italy Introduces a Financial Transaction Tax as of 2013

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Sunday, January 20, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Vania Petrella, partner resident in the Rome office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. This post is based on a Cleary Gottlieb memorandum.

On December 21, 2012, the Italian Parliament approved the budget law for 2013 (the “Budget Law”) contemplating, among other things, the introduction of a new tax applicable to certain financial transactions (the “Financial Transaction Tax” or “FTT”).

While the Budget Law includes an articulate regime of the FTT, ”some of its features will be set with a Ministerial Decree to be issued by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (the “Ministerial Decree”) within 30 days from the entry in force of the Budget Law (which is subject to its publication in the Official Gazette, expected to occur in the coming days).

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Business Ethics in Emerging Markets and Investors’ Expectations Standards

Posted by George Dallas, F&C Management Ltd., on
Saturday, January 19, 2013
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George Dallas is Director of Corporate Governance at F&C Investments. This post is based on an article by Mr. Dallas that first appeared in the International Corporate Governance Network’s 2012 Yearbook.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.” Bertrand Russell

Since the publication of its Statement and Guidance on Anti-Corruption Practices in 2009, the ICGN has actively advocated the fight against bribery and corruption as a fundamental component of the corporate governance agenda. The Statement and Guidance takes a global perspective, making clear that anticorruption is a priority in all markets.

But is it appropriate to set the same standards for anticorruption in all jurisdictions, particularly in emerging markets, where many underlying conditions are different and where bribery and corruption are particularly acute in both the public and private sectors? This was the question posed as the main discussion point at ICGN’s “Town Hall” meeting on business ethics in its June 2012 conference in Rio de Janeiro. Meeting participants, from a range of developed and emerging markets, expressed a resounding consensus that investors should not compromise their standards on anticorruption in emerging markets, even if corruption may be a more deep-rooted problem. However, while absolute standards on anticorruption should remain undiluted — beginning with a “zero tolerance” position — there may be different anticorruption strategies to apply in emerging markets, reflecting economic, cultural and legal differences.

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