shareholder litigation

Sarah Abrams
Bret Hilgart

Corporate share repurchases hit record levels in 2021. But as discussed in the following guest post by Sarah Abrams and Bret Hilgart, share repurchases can sometimes result in litigation and share repurchases could have important implications for directors and officers’ liability. Sarah is Head of Professional Liability at Bowhead Specialty Underwriters and Bret is Head of Commercial D&O at Bowhead Specialty Underwriters. I would like to thank Sarah and Bret for allowing me to publish their article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest posts from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is Sarah and Bret’s article.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Scrutiny Over Share Repurchase Programs; Can The Board Ever Get It Right?

Lebovitch_Mark_300dpiOne of the more significant recent developments in the corporate and securities litigation arena has been the emergence of the debate over fee-shifting bylaws following the Delaware Supreme Court’s May 2014 decision in ATP Tour, Inc. v. Deutscher Tennis Bund. Draft proposed legislation is now being considered by the Delaware legislature that would address

stockmarketticker2One of the more interesting recent developments in the D&O liability arena has been the emergence of issues surrounding fee-shifting bylaws. As readers will recall, in May 2014, the Delaware Supreme Court in the ATP Tours case upheld the validity of a non-stock corporation’s bylaw imposing attorneys’ fees on an unsuccessful claimant in an intra-corporate

delsealThe Delaware Supreme Court stirred up quite a bit of controversy earlier this year in the ATP Tours, Inc. v. Deutscher Tennis Bund case when it upheld the facial validity of a fee-shifting by law. The bylaw provided that an unsuccessful shareholder claimant in intracorporate litigation would have to pay his or her adversaries’ cost

Allen_Claudia_2013_Color[1]For many years, business groups and corporate representatives have tried to reform shareholder litigation through legislation and case law development, with mixed success. However, in more recent years an interesting new initiative has emerged – the attempt to achieve litigation reform through amendments to corporate bylaws. This effort received a significant boost last year when

frontierAmong the developments dominating the business headlines in recent weeks have been two unrelated stories – the rising wave of so-called “inversion” transactions in which U.S. companies acquire foreign firms to avoid U.S. tax laws and the revelation of previously undisclosed problems with the ignition switches in certain GM cars that allegedly resulted in numerous

Kara_Altenbaumer-price1[1]On June 20, 2014, the Texas Supreme Court issued its opinion in Ritchie v. Rupe, in which the Court addressed the rights and remedies of minority shareholders of Texas companies. In the following guest post Kara Altenbaumer-Price, Vice President, Management & Professional Liability Counsel for USI Southwest / USI Northwest, takes a look at the

delIn light of the recent legislative initiative to restrict Delaware stock corporations’ use of fee-shifting bylaws, companies incorporated in Delaware have, as described in a recent Law 360 article (here, subscription required) a “smaller more defined toolbox” to reduce the burdens involved with shareholder suits.  As it stands, the article notes, the “sharpest

dojCybersecurity has been a hot button issue for quite a while, but the U.S. Department of Justice ratcheted things up last week when it announced the indictment of five Chinese military officers for hacking into U.S. companies’ computers to steal trade secrets and other sensitive business information. U.S. prosecutors clearly believe the intrusions were serious