Christopher B. Chuff is an associate and Joanna Cline and Matthew Greenberg are partners at Pepper Hamilton LLP. This post is based on a recent Pepper memorandum by Mr. Chuff, Ms. Cline, Mr. Greenberg, and Taylor Bartholomew. This post is part of the Delaware law series; links to other posts in the series are available here. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes Independent Directors and Controlling Shareholders by Lucian Bebchuk and Assaf Hamdani (discussed on the Forum here).
On June 11, the Delaware Court of Chancery issued important guidance [1] to boards of directors of Delaware corporations and their controlling stockholders seeking to utilize the dual protections of MFW [2]—a special committee and a majority of the minority vote—to insulate themselves from fiduciary liability in connection with various corporate transactions.
First, the court held that when a corporation’s board or the corporation’s controller bypasses the special committee and negotiates directly with the corporation’s minority stockholders, MFW cleansing and the resulting application of business judgment review will be unavailable.
Second, the court held that when a corporation and its controller empower a special committee to consider and “say no” to various transaction alternatives, but retain the authority to pursue an alternative that is detrimental to the minority, any resulting special committee and stockholder approval of the transactions submitted for their approval will be found to be tainted by coercion, such that MFW cleansing will be unobtainable.
Thus, while the court’s decision confirms that the dual protections of MFW can be effective to protect against fiduciary liability claims, boards of directors and controlling stockholders who wish to maximize the effectiveness of those protections must be sure to avoid these and other pitfalls.