Category Archives: Legislation

Discovery Facilitators

Delaware courts should consider requiring parties to use discovery facilitators to streamline the ligation process.  Recently, the Delaware Court of Chancery opted to do so. In a blog post written for the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, DJCL Staff member, Alexandria Crouthamel, explains that this person is often a special master who is a lawyer that specializes in the area of law being litigated, but currently, there is no rule in Delaware stating who can or should be a discovery facilitator.  An issue to resolve is who will bear the cost for discovery facilitators, but given the heavy caseloads in the courts, this may be a viable option to help streamline the litigation process.

Read Alexandria’s post on the DJCL Blog.

 

2018 Amendments to Section 262 of the DGCL

In a blog post written for the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, DJCL Editor-in-Chief, Zachary J. Schnapp, discusses recent statutory amendments to Section 262 of Delaware’s General Corporation Law.  The 2018 amendments rectify inconsistencies with how appraisal rights are applied to intermediate-form mergers pursuant to Section 251(h). These sections now comport with how practitioners have understood and interpreted Section 262 in context of minority appraisal rights associated with long-form mergers prior to the implementation of the recent amendments.

Read Zak’s post on the DJCL Blog.

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act: What It Means for Business

In a blog post written for the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, DJCL Copy Editor and Schmutz Fellow, Joseph Farris, discusses the Congressional tax legislation, H.R. 1, also known as the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (“TCJA”), signed into law by President Trump in December 2017, and how it affects various businesses—regardless of whether they are a nonprofit, partnership, corporation, or LLC.

Read Joseph’s post on the DJCL Blog.

In re Appraisal of Dell Inc.: Eliminating the Tension Between a Share-Tracing Requirement and the Continuous Record Holder Requirement

In a blog post written for the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, DJCL Articles Editor Ashley Callaway discusses a resolution to the tension between the Continuous Holder Requirement and the 262 requirement that the shareholders voted not in favor of the merger.

Read more at http://www.djcl.org/blog.

Affordable Care Act Creates Incentives for Small Businesses to Provide Health Benefits

In a blog post for the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, DJCL Staff Member Samantha Darrow Osborne discusses how the Affordable Care Act’s recent substantial increase in individual penalties has created an incentive for small businesses to partake in offering health benefits to their employees.  She argues that small businesses that offer coverage will receive tax advantages and a generous tax credit, and will attract and retain more qualified employees.

Read more at http://www.djcl.org/blog.

“Adding Ethics to the Fiduciary Relationship”

Rick Alexander

This year’s second installment of the Ruby R. Vale Distinguished Speaker Series was held on February 18, 2016 and featured Frederick H. Alexander. Mr. Alexander is the Head of Legal Policy at B Lab and Counsel to Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP. His lecture, “Adding Ethics to the Fiduciary Relationship,” discussed the importance of developing rules throughout the governance system that allow corporations to act in a responsible and ethical manner.

It is well established that fiduciaries manage the corporation and act on its behalf for the sole benefit of its investors. To remedy the potential agency problem that may stem from this fiduciary relationship, fiduciary duties were created to mitigate the risk of misappropriation of corporate assets. As Mr. Alexander described it, however, fiduciary duties protect only stockholder interests, while ignoring the interests of all other stakeholders in the governance system, such as employees, customers, and the community. Further, Delaware jurisprudence reinforces this notion, especially by imposing a Revlon duty on directors to perform their fiduciary duties in the service of maximizing the corporation’s sale price. Sale price thus remains the most widely accepted measurement of a corporation’s success.

This creates a “shareholder primacy” paradigm where directors’ only responsibility is to increase profits for the stockholders’ benefit. As a result, any corporate action that benefits employees, customers, or the community must first benefit stockholders to be a valid use of the corporation’s assets. The shareholder primacy paradigm creates several problems, not only for society, but also for investors. First, shareholder primacy restricts management’s ability to pursue a variety of commitments on behalf of the corporation. It is evident that any commitment entered into by the corporation will be contingent upon creating value for shareholders. This creates a trust problem within a corporation, either between the employer and its employees or between the current stockholders and future stockholders. Second, primacy causes negative externalities to be passed from one company to another, which affects universal investors’ diversified interests in the general market. These two problems unite to form the overall problem with shareholder primacy: management’s goal is to obtain as much value as possible, but that is not always the best way to measure a corporation’s worth. Instead, Mr. Alexander argued that a corporation should be measured by its shared real value created when a corporation takes on certain commitments, thereby creating trusting relationships with stakeholders other than just stockholders.

Traditionally, the Delaware General Corporation Law (“DGCL”) mandated that shareholder-elected directors manage the company carefully and loyally pursuant to their fiduciary duties and for the sole purpose of creating shareholder value. However, the DGCL now provides an option for corporations to elect to be a benefit corporation. In addition to creating value for its shareholders, a benefit corporation may also consider the interests of all stakeholders. Under DGCL § 362, a Delaware benefit corporation must operate in a “responsible and sustainable manner.” A “public benefit” is a “positive effect (or reduction of negative effects) on one or more categories of persons, entities, communities or interests (other than stockholders in their capacities as stockholders) including, but not limited to, an artistic, charitable, cultural, economic, educational, environmental, literary, medical, religious, scientific or technological nature.” Today, thirty-two states have adopted provisions allowing for the option to become a benefit corporation, thus creating a new path for investment channels to follow.

In conclusion, Mr. Alexander emphasized that there is more to be done to encourage corporations to act in a socially responsible way. Because becoming a benefit corporation is still optional, corporations should adopt a set of fiduciary laws that recognize the interests of all stakeholder values and not just stockholder interests. In addition, investors should cease seeking short-term gains and instead invest private capital in avenues that result in positive social gains that benefit all stakeholders. Overall, Mr. Alexander urged that corporations should “stop competing to take and start competing to make.”

Random Thoughts on Proxy Access and Judicial Review

sclaesOfJusticeDarkLawrence A. Hamermesh
Ruby R. Vale Professor of Corporate and Business Law
Widener University School of Law, Wilmington, Delaware

On July 22, while I was vacationing and enjoying relatively cool temperatures in northern Maine, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, suffering in Washington’s heat and humidity, issued an opinion invalidating Rule 14a-11, which the Securities and Exchange Commission had adopted about a year earlier.

Now that I’m back in the office and have had a chance to reflect on the Court of Appeals’ opinion, I can only begin to describe how mixed my feelings are on this whole subject.  On one hand, I was involved with the preparation of the rule while employed with the Commission Continue reading Random Thoughts on Proxy Access and Judicial Review