Mohsen Manesh (Oregon) has posted a new article entitled Nearing 30, Is Revlon Showing Its Age? I have read a fair number of Mohsen’s articles and am consistently impressed.
The abstract reads:
Nearly thirty years ago, in Revlon, Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc., the Delaware Supreme Court famously dictated that in certain transactions involving a “sale or change in control,” the fiduciary obligation of a corporation’s board of directors is simply to “get[] the best price for the stockholders.” Applying a novel remedial perspective to this iconic doctrine, in The Dwindling of Revlon, Professor Lyman Johnson and Robert Ricca argue that Revlon is today of diminishing significance. In the three decades since, the coauthors observe, corporate law has evolved around Revlon, dramatically limiting the remedial clout of the doctrine. In this Essay, I show how two recent Delaware Chancery Court decisions — Chen v. Howard-Andersen and In re Rural Metro — underscore the expansive reach of Revlon and, therefore, the limits of Johnson and Ricca’s thesis. Instead, I suggest the dwindling of Revlon, if it is indeed dwindling, may be best observed from what is happening outside the pressed edges of corporate law, where other competing bodies of business law have emerged rejecting Revlon’s fiduciary mandate.
The article is a nice response to a thoughtful article by Lyman Johnson and Rob Ricca entitled The Dwindling of Revlon.
Both articles are highly recommended.
In addition, Stephen Bainbridge, Christopher Bruner, Franklin Gevurtz, and Vice Chancellor Travis Laster have all weighed in with interesting articles on Revlon over the last few years.