The topic of this outline is mergers and acquisitions where the target company is “distressed.” Distress for these purposes generally means that a company is having difficulty dealing with its liabilities—whether in making required payments on borrowed money, obtaining or paying down trade credit, addressing debt covenant breaches, or raising additional debt to address funding needs.

Distressed companies can represent attractive acquisition targets. Their stock and their debt often trade at prices reflecting the difficulties they face, and they may be under pressure to sell assets or securities quickly to raise capital or pay down debt. Accordingly, prospective acquirors may have an opportunity to acquire attractive assets or securities at a discount. This outline considers how best to acquire a distressed company from every possible point of entry, whether that consists of buying existing or newly-issued stock, merging with the target, buying assets, or buying existing debt in the hope that it converts into ownership.

Some modestly distressed companies require a mere “band-aid” (such as a temporary waiver of a financial maintenance covenant when the macroeconomy has led to a temporary decline in earnings, but the company is able to meet all of its obligations as they come due). Others require “major surgery” (as where the company is fundamentally over-levered and must radically reduce debt).

…continue reading: Dealmaking in a Distressed Environment

We have previously discussed a wave of “say-on-pay” lawsuits focused on allegedly inadequate proxy disclosures (in a memo, article, and memo). At least six courts (four state and two federal) have denied requests for injunctive relief against say-on-pay votes. Now, a federal court that had already denied preliminary injunctive relief has dismissed the complaint with prejudice. Noble v. AAR Corp., No. 12 C 7973 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 3, 2013).

Applying Delaware and federal law, the Northern District of Illinois held that Delaware law did not require a company soliciting proxies in advisory say-on-pay vote to disclose information beyond that specified in Regulation S-K:

…continue reading: Federal Court Dismisses Delaware Law Compensation Disclosure Claim

The widespread use of social media in today’s global marketplace presents opportunities and challenges for all financial market participants, including boards of directors, investors and regulators. While social media outlets provide unprecedented pathways for companies to engage actively with investors, both large and small, as well as with reporters, analysts, customers, suppliers and other members of the corporate community, there are regulatory restrictions that public companies need to heed. Releasing information via Twitter, Facebook, and similar channels must be done with caution to avoid violating Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Regulation FD as it currently stands. Moreover, companies are vulnerable to negative publicity that can be quickly and widely disseminated over social media networks, even if they are not active participants in such channels.

As public companies increasingly use and rely upon the new avenues of communication provided by social media, it is correspondingly important for directors to be aware of the manner and extent of their companies’ use of social media and have a basic understanding of the risks and benefits of corporate participation. At the same time, it may be incumbent upon the SEC to revisit Regulation FD. The immediacy and availability of communications made through social media suit the purpose of Regulation FD far better than anything available at the time of its passage in 2000; by failing to update Regulation FD, the SEC may find that the rule is impeding rather than furthering its stated goals. Fundamentally, the interests of all market participants are aligned when it comes to encouraging companies to use social media consistently, effectively, and legally, as enhanced transparency and increased engagement generally benefit the market as a whole.

…continue reading: The Board, Social Media and Regulation FD

Reaffirming that the advisory “say-on-pay” vote required by the Dodd-Frank Act cannot be used to attack directors’ executive compensation decisions, the United States District Court for the District of Delaware recently dismissed a derivative complaint brought after a negative say-on-pay vote. The court, applying Delaware law, found that the plaintiff had not pleaded facts sufficient to show that demand would have been futile, or to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Raul v. Rynd, C.A. No. 11-560-LPS (D. Del. March 14, 2013).

The complaint was filed in 2011, and was one of a number of similar lawsuits filed after Dodd-Frank’s requirement for advisory votes on compensation came into effect. The plaintiff challenged the board’s compensation decisions, alleging that increased compensation in a year when the company posted a net operating loss and negative shareholder return violated the company’s pay-for-performance philosophy and rendered the company’s compensation disclosures in its proxy statement misleading. The plaintiff asserted that the negative shareholder advisory vote rebutted the presumption of business judgment surrounding the board’s compensation decisions.

…continue reading: Delaware Federal Court Dismisses Say-on-Pay Case

In a recent case that arose in the context of a consent solicitation seeking a change of control of a public company, the Delaware Court of Chancery found the target board in breach of its fiduciary duties for not approving a dissident slate for the purposes of preventing a change-of-control-triggered put right in the company’s debt agreements. Kallick v. SandRidge Energy, Inc., C.A. No. 8182-CS (Del. Ch. Mar. 8, 2013). Chancellor Strine’s ruling extends prior Delaware law on the topic and provides cautionary guidance about the future effectiveness of such clauses, which are common features of debt documents and other commercial arrangements.

The case arose out of a hedge fund’s efforts to destagger and replace a majority of the board of directors of SandRidge Energy via a consent solicitation. In opposing the consent solicitation, the company initially warned shareholders that a change in the majority of the board that was not approved by the company’s directors would obligate the company to offer to repurchase $4.3 billion of debt at 101% of par pursuant to certain provisions in its debt instruments—provisions sometimes called “poison puts” or “proxy puts.” The company subsequently changed its public posture and noted that the put was “unlikely” to be harmful, because the debt was then trading above par, making it doubtful that the put would be exercised. However, the board failed to decide whether to “approve” the dissident nominees for purposes of the debt documents, thus leaving a cloud of uncertainty regarding the put and drawing a legal challenge from a shareholder.

…continue reading: Delaware Court Raises Bar for Use of “Poison Put” Provisions

ISS, the dominant proxy advisory firm, recently unveiled its new ISS Governance QuickScore product, which will replace its Governance Risk Indicators (“GRId”) next month. ISS asserts that QuickScore is an improvement on the GRId product because it is “quantitatively driven” (with a “secondary policy-based overlay”). Using an algorithm purportedly derived from correlations between governance factors and financial metrics, QuickScore will rank companies in deciles within each of ISS’ existing four pillars—Audit, Board Structure, Compensation and Shareholder Rights – and provide an overall governance rating to “provide a quick understanding of a company’s relative governance risk to an index or region.” While one can understand, as a business matter, ISS’ desire to continually reinvent and “improve” its products, the constant shifting of goalposts creates uncertainty and inefficiency. More important, QuickScore will likely provide a no more complete or accurate assessment of corporate governance practices than its predecessors, and it may be worse.

When ISS adopted its GRId product three years ago, we cautiously noted that it offered greater transparency and granularity than the blunt one-dimensional CGQ ratings that it replaced. Unfortunately, in our view, going back to a system of opaque quantified ratings is a move in the wrong direction. After a substantial investment of management time and effort, companies have familiarity with the GRId “level of concern” approach, which at least helps them understand and address any legitimate issues or explain any divergences from ISS’ “best practices.” While ISS retains GRId’s formulaic approach, to the extent that it does not share the weightings it assigns to the various governance factors, it reduces transparency as companies would not be able to compute their own QuickScores.

…continue reading: ISS Governance QuickScore: Back to the Future

The Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse and Cornerstone Research recently released their analysis of securities class action filings in 2012. They report that 152 new securities class actions were filed last year, a 19 percent decline from the 188 new filings in 2011.

Of particular interest is the observation that only thirteen cases arising from merger and acquisition transactions were filed in federal courts in 2012, as compared to 43 in 2011 and 40 in 2010. “Evidence indicates,” the report states, that merger and acquisition litigation is “now being pursued almost exclusively in state courts after the unusual jump in federal M&A filings in 2010 and 2011.” Though such litigation typically arises under state law, plaintiffs often have the option to frame their claims as violations of the federal securities laws or bring them in federal court by invoking diversity jurisdiction.

…continue reading: Litigation of Investor Claims: State v. Federal Court

The say-on-pay advisory vote requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 have turned out to be a fertile source of nuisance litigation filed by aggressive plaintiffs’ lawyers. The first wave of lawsuits generally consisted of after-the-fact actions targeting companies that experienced failed say-on-pay advisory votes. These initial cases, which appeared primarily to be attempts to extort settlements, were nearly all dismissed on procedural grounds. The current wave, embodied by a recent spate of lawsuits filed primarily by a single plaintiffs’ law firm, is potentially more problematic from a practical perspective for targeted companies, even though the claims involved appear to have even less basis in law or fact. The pattern of these recent actions is for a lawsuit to be filed in state court sometime between the filing of the definitive proxy statement and the date of the annual meeting, alleging that the proxy disclosure is inadequate with respect to executive compensation (or relating to the authorization or issuance of additional common shares for equity incentive plans), claiming breach of fiduciary duty by directors, and calling for the shareholder meeting to be enjoined until additional disclosure is made.

Directors and corporate managers need to be prepared for this type of proxy disclosure litigation, particularly since it appears that little can be done to prevent such lawsuits from being brought. Boards of companies that are targeted in this manner may feel significant pressure to settle because they do not want to postpone the annual meeting or, worse, face the possibility that the required say-on-pay advisory vote or other needed votes could be enjoined. However, it is worth noting that the earlier wave of lawsuits that targeted companies with failed say-on-pay votes has subsided, undoubtedly due to the discouraging results obtained by the plaintiffs in court. The same fate is likely to befall the current wave, but only if companies are willing to fight these lawsuits in court so that the plaintiffs and their attorneys encounter judicial skepticism and dismissal rather than the rewards of a quick and lucrative settlement.

…continue reading: The New Wave of Proxy Disclosure Litigation

As boards of directors examine the risks that their companies face, corporate cybersecurity issues loom large. Forty-eight percent of directors (and 55 percent of general counsel) cited data security as their top concern in a recent study by Corporate Board Member/FTI Consulting. These numbers have roughly doubled since 2008, when only a quarter of directors and general counsel cited data security as a major concern. With revenues, intellectual property, business relationships and customer confidence potentially at stake, directors should consider whether their companies and management teams are adequately addressing the growing threat of cybersecurity in the new high-tech landscape.

Cybersecurity risk is a difficult and intimidating topic for corporate boards to consider. However, it is important to keep in mind that cybersecurity risk is only one of many areas of risk that are overseen by boards of directors and that, in most cases, the usual strategies and procedures for evaluating and managing risk can apply. Directors are not expected to be experts in this area and are entitled to rely upon management and outside experts for information and advice. Nonetheless, directors should request that management reports to the board on the steps the company is taking to mitigate cyber threats, and directors should consider whether the company is appropriately assessing its risks and devoting adequate resources to the issue. The business judgment rule remains the standard for evaluating decisions taken by a board in this area.

…continue reading: Cybersecurity Risks and the Board of Directors

Institutional Shareholder Services has released its 2013 Corporate Governance Policy Updates, which represent a more moderate approach than the proposals it released for comment in October. These changes, which will generally apply for the 2013 proxy season, continue the trend of narrowing director discretion in matters traditionally considered to be within directors’ authority. In addition, ISS’ expansion into social policy matters appears often to be at odds with shareholder and corporate interests and is far more likely to benefit special interest groups. It should be noted, though, that ISS took into account many of the comments it received and in some cases moved from a one-size-fits-all approach to a more appropriate case-by-case analysis. Although it is important that boards of directors be cognizant of ISS voting policies, it is essential that, in their decision-making, directors carefully consider the best interests of the corporations they serve and not merely defer to shareholder advocacy groups.

…continue reading: ISS Moderates Proposed Voting Policy Updates for the 2013 Proxy Season