Faculty Bibliography

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new attention to the period between signing and closing in M&A transactions. Transactional planners heavily negotiate the provisions that govern the behavior of the parties during this window, not only to allocate risk between the buyer and seller, but also to manage moral hazard, opportunistic behavior, and other distortions in incentives. Prior literature, both academic and practitioner, has focused virtually exclusively on the material adverse effect (MAE) clause. COVID-19, however, has exposed an important connection between the MAE clause and the obligation for the seller to act “in the ordinary course of business” between signing and closing. This Article is the first to examine the interaction between the MAE clause and the ordinary course covenant in M&A deals. We construct a new database of 1,300 M&A transactions along with their MAE and ordinary course covenants—by far the most comprehensive, accurate, and detailed database of such deal terms that currently exists. We document how these deal terms currently appear in M&A transactions, including the sharp rise in “pandemic” carveouts from the MAE clause since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We then provide implications for corporate boards, the Delaware courts, and transactional planners. Our empirical findings and recommendations are relevant not just for the next pandemic or “Act of God” event, but also the next (inevitable) downturn in the economy more generally.

A go-shop process turns the traditional M&A deal process on its head: rather than a pre-signing market canvass followed by a post-signing “no shop” period, a go-shop deal involves a limited pre-signing market check, followed by a post-signing “go shop” process to find a higher bidder. A decade ago one of us published the first systematic empirical study of go-shop deals. Contrary to the conventional wisdom at the time, the study found that go-shops could yield a meaningful market check, with a higher bidder appearing 13% of the time during the go-shop period. In this Article, we compile a new sample of M&A deals announced between 2010 and 2018. We find that go-shops, in general, are no longer an effective tool for post-signing price discovery. We then document several reasons for this change: the proliferation of first-bidder match rights, the shortening of go-shop windows, CEO conflicts of interest, investment banker effects, and collateral terms that have the effect of tightening the go-shop window. We conclude that the story of the go-shop technology over the past ten years is one of innovation corrupted: transactional planners innovate, the Delaware courts signal qualified acceptance, and then a broader set of practitioners push the technology beyond its breaking point. In view of these developments in transactional practice, we provide recommendations for the Delaware courts and corporate boards of directors.

Deal protection in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals evolves in response to Delaware case law and the business goals of acquirers and targets. We construct a new sample of M&A deals from 2003 to 2015 to identify four such areas of evolution in current transactional practice: (1) termination fee “creep,” which was pervasive in the 1980s and 1990s, seems to have gone away by the 2000s; (2) match rights, which were unheard of in the 1990s, became ubiquitous by the 2010s; (3) asset lockups, which disappeared from the landscape for thirty years, have reemerged, though in a “new economy” variation; and (4) practitioners have begun implementing side agreements to the deal that have a commercial purpose along with a deal protection effect. We offer three recommendations for how the Delaware courts should approach this “new look” to the deal protection landscape. First, courts should clarify that lockups must survive Unocal /Unitrin “preclusive” or “coercive” analysis in addition to Revlon “reasonableness” review. Second, Delaware courts should apply basic game theory to identify the deterrent effect of match rights and new economy asset lockups. And third, Delaware courts should take a functional approach to deal protection, meaning that collateral provisions that have a deal protection effect should be scrutinized under deal protection doctrine, even if these agreements have a colorable business purpose as well.