Andrew A. Schwartz is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School. This post is based on Professor Schwartz’s recent article published in The Harvard Business Law Review, available here.
Many public companies have shed takeover defenses in recent years, on the theory that such defenses reduce share price. Yet new data presented in my latest article, Corporate Legacy, shows that practically all new public companies—those launching their initial public offering (IPO)—go public with powerful takeover defenses in place, which presumably depresses the price of the shares. This behavior seems strange, as pre-IPO shareholders both have a strong incentive to maximize the value of the shares being sold in the IPO and are in position to control whether to adopt takeover defenses. Why do founders and early investors engage in this seemingly counterproductive behavior? In Corporate Legacy, I look to a surprising place, the ancient Greek epic poem, the Iliad, for a solution to this important puzzle, and claim that pre-IPO shareholders adopt strong takeover defenses, at least in part, so that the company can remain independent indefinitely and thus create a corporate legacy that may last for generations.