The so-called “Bump-Up” Exclusion found in many D&O insurance policies typically excludes coverage for claims alleging that the insured company, as the acquiror, underpaid or sought to underpay for the acquisition of a target company. However, in a recent decision following a bench trial, in which the court interpreted an unusually worded exclusion that arguably applied to preclude coverage whether or not the insured company was the acquiror or the acquisition target, the court held that the exclusion unambiguously precluded coverage for the settlement of a claim that the directors of Onyx Pharmaceuticals, the insured company, had breached their duties by accepting an inadequate amount for the sale of their company. The judge’s opinion is a cautionary tale for anyone involved in the placement of D&O insurance and also has important implications about the wording of the bump-up exclusion. A copy of the court’s December 30, 2022, post-trial Final Statement of Decision can be found here.
Continue Reading Exclusion Bars Coverage for Insured Company’s Acquisition Underpayment
As I have noted in prior posts (most recently 
As I have noted elsewhere on this site (for example 
Several years ago, when it became clear that plaintiffs’ lawyers were going to file merger objection lawsuits in connection with essentially every M&A transaction, the D&O insurers responded by adding a separate, larger retention for M&A-related claims. The larger M&A-related claim retention quickly became pretty much a standard feature of public company D&O insurance policies. However, because the M&A claim retention is in many instances substantially larger than the retention that would otherwise apply, the question of whether the larger retention applies to a particular claim can be a significant one. In a recent case, the Delaware Superior Court addressed a D&O insurance coverage dispute in which, among other things, the insurers and the policyholder disagreed on whether the larger M&A-related claim retention applied to the underlying litigation. In an interesting November 23, 2021 opinion (
The percentage of M&A transactions valued over $100 million attracting at least one merger objection lawsuit continued to decline in 2017, according to a recent Cornerstone Research study. The July 18, 2018 study, entitled “Shareholder Litigation Involving Acquisitions of Public Companies: Review of 2017 M&A Litigation” (
Representations and warranties insurance has been around for years, but it is becoming an increasingly important part of M&A transactions, according to an August 24, 2015 Law 360 article (
In recent years, the uptake for M&A representations and warranties insurance has increased. Just the same, even now, the participants in the M&A transaction often 
Insurance to provide coverage for breaches of representations or warranties in M&A transaction documents has been available in the marketplace for several years, but the specialty insurance product has not always been fully understood. More recently, interest in the product has grown and the product has improved, and so take-up for the product has increased