Earlier this month, VC Glasscock issued an opinion in Kormos v. Playtika Holding UK II, where he dismissed breach of fiduciary duty claims against the Chair/CEO and CFO of a controlled company.  The opinion made reference to an earlier bench ruling where he sustained claims against the company’s controlling shareholder, Giant/Alpha, which is what alerted me to the bench ruling – which issued in January – in the first place.  And that bench ruling is actually what has my attention.

Playtika Holding Corp is a publicly traded company with a controlling shareholder, Playtika Holding UK II Limited (“Holding”).  Holding is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Giant/Alpha.  In 2021, Giant/Alpha faced a liquidity crisis and desperately needed to raise cash, which it sought to do by selling Holding’s Playtika stock, potentially in connection with a sale of the entire company.  But the process was rushed and messy, with Playtika itself and Giant/Alpha running separate inquiries; eventually, Giant/Alpha instructed Playtika’s board to stop talking to potential buyers, but to instead cause Playtika to institute a self-tender for its own stock.  SEC rules require that tender offers treat all shares of a class equally, which meant that the public shareholders – as well as Giant/Alpha – were able to tender in to the offer.  But, with Giant/Alpha tendering, it could receive cash back from Playtika which would then solve its liquidity problems.

Plaintiffs, the public holders of Playtika, alleged that this was a conflicted transaction that was not in Playtika’s best interests, and was therefore subject to entire fairness review (though they did not claim the price paid for the shares was unfair).

There’s just one problem with that argument, doctrinally: ever since Sinclair Oil Corp. v. Levien, 280 A.2d 717 (Del. 1971), we know that in order to be a conflicted transaction, implicating the duty of loyalty, the controller must receive a nonratable benefit, i.e., some benefit not available to the other stockholders – and arguably, it has to be a benefit that specifically comes at the minority’s expense.  In Sinclair itself, for example, the controlling shareholder caused the company to pay out massive dividends that allegedly robbed the company of the ability to take advantage of alternative opportunities, and it did so for its own private reasons.  Still, the dividend payments weren’t a conflict transaction – and were therefore subject only to business judgment review – because all shareholders got the same dividends, controller and noncontrollers alike.  The controlling shareholder did not receive a special benefit at the expense of the minority (As the Delaware Supreme Court put it, “a proportionate share of this money was received by the minority shareholders of Sinven. Sinclair received nothing from Sinven to the exclusion of its minority stockholders. As such, these dividends were not self-dealing”).

Similarly, in Playtika, the self-tender may have been motivated by Giant/Alpha’s need for cash, but all shareholders could participate in the tender on equal terms, meaning, it wasn’t a conflict transaction, and was therefore subject only to business judgment review.

Except! 

There was a twist.

Giant/Alpha did not want to risk tendering so many shares that it actually lost control of Playtika.  So, it negotiated a provision whereby Playtika would have to announce the number of shares tendered publicly, which would allow Giant/Alpha to keep close tabs on the status of the offer.  Giant/Alpha could also withdraw shares that it previously tendered – which I gather was a negotiated term of the agreement, but also, by the way, required under SEC rules for all tendering shareholders.  So, because Giant/Alpha was able to monitor the shares tendered, and withdraw its own shares, it could adjust its tender and maintain control of the company.

Those provisions, according to VC Glasscock – as he explained in his bench ruling in January, and again in his recent opinion earlier this month, were a nonratable benefit to Giant/Alpha, because they uniquely allowed Giant/Alpha to maintain control, which was not something the minority could share.  And that was enough to transform the Playtika self-tender into a conflict transaction, subject to entire fairness review.

So here’s the thing.

Treating the right to monitor the number of public shares tendered as a nonratable benefit to Giant/Alpha – let alone one that comes at the expense of minority shareholders – strikes me as a bit of a reach.  SEC rules require that tendering shareholders be able to withdraw before the tender offer closes; that wasn’t a benefit unique to Giant/Alpha.  And if Playtika publicly announced how many shares had been tendered, that meant everyone could see what the status was.   

That said, the whole scenario was obviously hinky from the get-go.  There was an awful initial search for alternative transactions; the self-tender itself was designed to benefit Giant/Alpha, and you can see why a judge might be looking for a reason to at least scrutinize the arrangement more closely.  Hence, a nonratable benefit was identified – Giant/Alpha’s ability to modulate the number of shares it tendered. 

And it matters because, as I’ve written two papers about, and also blogged repeatedly (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), the more that Delaware makes it very easy to insulate deals from review unless they involve a controlling shareholder conflict, the more that courts are motivated to identify a controlling shareholder conflict in order to give themselves the opportunity to review problematic transactions.  As my papers discuss, that’s often exhibited in the definition of what it means to be a controlling shareholder in the first place – but, as we can also see here, it exhibits itself in the definition of conflict, as well.

Anyway, that kind of morass is exactly why the Delaware Supreme Court granted interlocutory review of TripAdvisor, i.e., to address the definition of a conflict transaction.  But TripAdvisor involves a reincorporation from Delaware to Nevada; I have no idea whether the court will address just that scenario – which obviously involves questions of comity not present for other kinds of potential conflicts – or whether it will take a broader view of the problem.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the proposed amendments to the DGCL, and the questions they raised.  Well, I wasn’t the only one who had concerns, and so, now, there are new amendments to the amendments (which The Chancery Daily has posted here).  And once again, I just got these last night and I read quickly (in the middle of end-of-semester grading) so I reserve the right to be completely wrong, but, here is my quick reaction.

As I explained in my prior post , many of the original amendments were intended as a response to VC Laster’s decision in West Palm Beach Firefighters’ Pension Fund v. Moelis & Co.  Moelis struck down a shareholder agreement that functionally conveyed management power on a particular stockholder, by giving him veto power over most board decisions.  VC Laster held that a board’s authority can only be cabined to such a degree in the charter, including through a preferred share issuance – and he also suggested that there may be some outer limits on how far even a charter provision could go in restricting board authority.

The original proposed DGCL amendments would have overruled Moelis in both respects.  They would have authorized stockholder agreements that usurped board authority and would not have placed any limits on the degree of authority that could be usurped.  The latter point struck me as particularly important, because traditionally, the corporate form is defined by its board-centric model.  If that can be contractually avoided, does the corporate form have any value at all?

The new amendments are a little different, in that they do not permit contracts that would confer governance powers beyond what could be included in the charter, or would be contrary to Delaware law.  In other words, if there are certain core powers that must remain with the board and can’t be visited in someone else via the charter, then, these amendments to the amendments would not allow those powers to be transferred via stockholder contracts.  The new language provides:

no provision of such contract shall be enforceable against the corporation to the extent such contract provision is contrary to the certificate of incorporation or would be contrary to the laws of this State … if included in the certificate of incorporation.

But also, in determining what these “core” board powers are, courts can’t rely on the fact that the power is one that is statutorily conferred on the board.  As the amendments put it, “a restriction, prohibition or covenant in any such contract that relates to any specified action shall not be deemed contrary to the laws of this State or the certificate of incorporation by reason of a provision of this title or the certificate of incorporation that authorizes or empowers the board of directors (or any one or more directors) to take such action.”

Now, the first thing that leaps out at me is how these new amendments interact with VC Laster’s decision in McRitchie v. Zuckerberg.  There, Laster held that the directors of a Delaware corporation have a duty to maximize the value of the equity, and do not have a duty to maximize the value of a diversified portfolio. (I blogged about the case when the complaint was first filed).  But Laster went on to hold that corporations could adopt charter provisions that would change directors’ fiduciary duties, so that they are obligated to consider diversified shareholders.   That’s contestable; Steve Bainbridge, for example, has suggested that Delaware corporations cannot by private ordering depart from shareholder wealth maximization and I personally would ask what’s the difference between Laster’s proposal and a charter provision that waives the duty of loyalty – which has long been assumed to be unwaivable, except as otherwise statutorily provided (like, opportunity waivers). 

But if Laster is right, then, of course, that represents a very broad view of how far charters can go to alter the board’s authority, which would also mean that stockholder agreements, under the amended proposed amendments, could go very far in altering board authority. 

Which then raises the question: Is there value to requiring that restrictions on board authority be placed in the charter rather than a separate shareholder agreement?

One obvious value is transparency; at least if the company is not subject to SEC reporting, shareholder agreements may not be available to the public or even to other shareholders.  Another value may concern the ease with which an agreement versus a charter could be amended, though I still think that if you conferred special rights to preferred shareholders, you could also confer the right to vote on amendments to those rights to the same preferred shareholders, which would make ease of amendment roughly equivalent.

Another value, though, concerns choice of law.  As I previously blogged, shareholder agreements are subject to ordinary choice of law principles; charter provisions and preferred share terms are subject to the internal affairs doctrine.  (Read my paper addressing this!)

The comments to the amendments to the amendments now discuss choice of law, but I don’t think they change the landscape.  The comments say:

Notwithstanding any choice of law provision in the contract, the reference in the last sentence of § 122(18) to the law “governing” the contract shall be deemed to refer to the laws of this State if and to the extent choice of law principles (such as the internal affairs doctrine) so require.

In other words, it’ll be another state’s law if choice of law principles so require, which, for stockholder agreements, they often do.

But further muddying the waters is this:  The new amendments say that stockholder contracts can’t go beyond what a charter amendment would permit except with respect to DGCL §115, which can be waived in a stockholder contract.

DGCL §115 requires that a Delaware forum be available for claims that “(i) that are based upon a violation of a duty by a current or former director or officer or stockholder in such capacity, or (ii) as to which this title confers jurisdiction upon the Court of Chancery.”

So, as I understand it, let’s say a stockholder agreement conferred extraordinary governance powers on a single stockholder.  Let’s say those powers arguably made the stockholder a “controller” subject to fiduciary obligations.  The contract could also provide that claims against the stockholder for breach of fiduciary duty must be brought in an arbitral or non-Delaware forum.  Presumably, this would include derivative claims – a shareholder would sue derivatively claiming self-dealing by a controller, the corporation would be bound by the forum selection clause, and so, the claim would be heard outside of Delaware.

I also assume that disputes regarding compliance with, or even the interpretation of, a stockholder agreement could be heard in a non-Delaware forum.  So, if someone wanted to claim that a particular stockholder agreement was unenforceable because it conferred power on a stockholder that went beyond what Delaware law permits, and it turned out that the agreement selected another state’s courts as the forum for disputes, that argument – that Delaware law does not permit delegation of such-and-such power – would not be heard in a Delaware court.

As far as I can tell, this provides an incentive for stockholders to enter into these agreements – even if they have hard control over the board and don’t really need them – because it allows them to opt out of DGCL 115, and possibly even the statutory limits on the agreements themselves, which will no longer be policed in Delaware.

Well, I have no idea how this ends but, I gotta tell you, all this drama fascinated my corpgov seminar students, so I suppose I will have much to discuss with my classes next year.

I very much enjoyed Edwin Hu, Nadya Malenko, and Jonathon Zytnick’s new paper, Custom Proxy Voting Advice.   They find that most institutional investors who buy proxy voting advice from ISS and Glass Lewis don’t use their benchmark recommendations, but instead create a tailored set of preferences and get recommendations that are based on those preferences.  Then, in particular cases, they may depart from those recs and vote another way – which in fact appears to happen quite a bit for shareholders who use customized recommendations, because, the authors speculate, the customized recommendations free up attention from less contentious votes, and permit shareholders to focus on the more contentious ones.

The point is important because, first, it may mean that headlines like “ISS recommends XXX” may be less meaningful than we think, because the benchmark recommendation may not be what many clients receive.  And second, these findings continue to demonstrate the folly of the perennial corporate complaints that proxy advisors have too much power and/or shareholders “robovote” in response to proxy advisor recommendations.   The real complaint is that shareholders have too much power and too many preferences, and if that’s the problem – well, management should take it up with them.

The final thing to note is that much of the differential comes, unsurprisingly, environmental/social proposals.  Which makes me want to draw attention to this paper by Roni Michaely, Guillem Ordonez-Calafi, and Silvina Rubio, Mutual Funds’ Strategic Voting on Environmental and Social Issues.  They find that ESG-themed mutual funds within larger mainstream families engage in a subtle form of greenwashing, whereby funds within larger families tend to vote for the E/S proposals when the proposals are very likely to pass, or very likely not to pass – and they deviate and vote with the family for the closer votes.  So they vote E/S more than regular-themed funds, but only when those votes won’t make a difference in outcome.  Which is consistent, I think, with Hu, Malenko, and Zytnick’s findings regarding how institutions use custom proxy voting advice, and deviate from it.

Previously, I posted about the grumbles of discontent from the corporate bar regarding several recent Delaware Court of Chancery rulings, resulting in proposals for statutory amendments that seemed somewhat hasty and poorly thought-out.  Sujeet Indap had a piece in the Financial Times about it; before that, there was coverage in a local Delaware outlet.

Now, Law360 reports on a new memo issued by Wilson Sonsini, reminiscent of Martin Lipton’s famous Interco memo, warning that Delaware may no longer be as friendly to business.  From the memo:

In recent months, a conversation has emerged as to whether Delaware should remain the favored state of incorporation for business entities. Indeed, many of our clients have asked us whether they should remain in Delaware or choose Delaware as the state of incorporation for their new ventures. In this discussion, we provide our reflections on that question and various factors that entrepreneurs, investors, and companies should consider when weighing incorporation in Delaware against incorporation in another state. …

In the conversations that we have had with clients, businesspeople, and others in the corporate bar, we have heard the following reasons given for reconsidering incorporation in Delaware:

• A growing number of cases that have addressed technical issues, in the M&A context and elsewhere, and reached unexpected results in a manner that has impacted corporate structuring and transaction planning
• A perception that Delaware judges have in several opinions adopted an increasingly suspicious or negative tone toward corporate boards and management, and toward the corporate bar
• The challenges that the case law can pose for companies with influential founders or significant stockholders, the process mechanisms that such companies are expected to use, and the remedies that have been reached in those cases
• A sense that Delaware judges can be skeptical of the governance of venture-backed private companies and many Silicon Valley-based companies
• The increasingly active, and successful, plaintiffs’ bar in both technical and fiduciary claims, which can leave boards and management with the sense that they are planning around “gotcha” litigation driven by plaintiffs’ lawyers more than those lawyers’ individual clients

Obviously, the third point here regarding influential founders/significant stockholders is a reference to the MFW process, which the Delaware Supreme Court just reaffirmed.  But the Delaware Supreme Court also just granted interlocutory review in TripAdvisor, which raises the possibility that some of the tension will be ratcheted down through a narrowed definition of what counts as a conflicted transaction that triggers the need for entire fairness review/MFW cleansing in the first place.

What’s more interesting to me are points 2 and 4.  I assume that some of those objections are about Moelis, which struck down the type of shareholder agreement that seems to have become common in VC-backed firms and was carried over to the public space, and maybe even go as far back as decisions like Trados, which held that in a VC backed firm, the directors’ fiduciary obligations run to the common over the preferred (even though Trados itself did not grant any damages to the common shareholders).

But I also suspect that some of the sturm und drang has its antecedents in In re Oracle Corp. Derivative Litig., 824 A.2d 917 (Del. Ch. 2003), when then-Vice Chancellor Strine held that the independence of a special committee was compromised by close professional and networking ties.  The case was a break from prior Delaware jurisprudence, which treated directors as independent in almost all situations that didn’t involve either blood or money, and the Delaware Supreme Court rejected his approach in Beam v. Stewart, 845 A.2d 1040 (Del. 2004).  Once Strine ascended to the Delaware Supreme Court, though, the caselaw started inching back his way, starting with Sanchez, continuing on with Sandys v. Pincus, and culminating in Marchand v. Barnhill.  The thing about these more nuanced tests for dependence/independence is that they may, in fact, hit Silicon Valley companies particularly hard, because of the chumminess of the tech world, and it’s not surprising that once independence is questioned, the tone of the opinions is going to come off as skeptical, in a manner that defendants do not like.  

Anyway, I’ll just conclude by echoing the comments in the Law360 article, namely, that whatever the correct direction of Delaware law, this kind of open warfare (and, frankly, attempted deployment of political muscle) challenges the reputation Delaware has built for comity and a technocratic approach to lawmaking. That’s the kind of thing that undermines Delaware’s legitimacy as, in a sense, a de facto federal agency.  It’s the kind of thing that invites more intrusion from federal regulators, and less respect from other jurisdictions – not just other states, but around the world.