Recently, the Investor Coalition for Equal Votes (ICEV) has been sending letters to private companies requesting a meeting to discuss dual-class voting structures and their impact on corporate governance....more
Welcome to the latest edition of Fenwick’s Securities Law Update. This edition contains updates and reminders on: ..The federal court decision that struck down the FTC’s noncompete ban, blocking it from taking effect...more
The Internal Revenue Service’s new private letter ruling (PLR) concerned a domestication of a Foreign Parent corporation under U.S. ownership—with a few notable twists. First, the PLR applied a substance-over-form analysis to...more
The Fifth Circuit recently reversed a district court’s dismissal of claims that the fiduciaries of a 401(k) plan breached the duty of prudence under ERISA by offering participants retail share classes instead of cheaper...more
Buyout firms have recently used a range of reset tools to incentivise management, requiring careful navigation of legal, tax, and regulatory issues. As buyout firms navigate current pressures on portfolio company...more
The Supreme Court of Delaware recently issued a decision upholding long-standing precedent regarding Delaware’s class vote requirement. The case, In re Fox Corporation/Snap Inc. Section 242 Litigation, concerned amendments to...more
The Cayman Islands is a world leader in the establishment of offshore hedge funds. Its tax-neutral platform, stable economy, sophisticated banking sector, confidentiality and professional financial service industry are just...more
In the recent Court of Appeal judgment in DnaNudge Limited v. Ventura Capital GP Limited [2023] EWCA Civ 1142, the court confirmed that a provision of the company’s articles allowing for the conversion of Series A shares to...more
We recently represented Klaviyo, Inc. (NYSE: KVYO), in its $576 million initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. As has been extensively reported in the media, Klaviyo’s very successful offering represented the...more
On March 22, 2023, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a complaint in US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Justin Sun, the owner of BitTorrent, Inc., a file-sharing platform; three...more
What happened - A recent Delaware chancery court decision has called into question consolidated voting on charter amendments by some companies with multiple classes of common stock. In Garfield v. Boxed, Inc., the court...more
Key Takeaway: The Sixth Circuit largely affirmed the grant of a motion to dismiss, but reversed the district court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claim that the defendants had failed to select the lowest-cost share class of...more
There has been no shortage of LP allocations to the growth equity asset class over the last decade. The attractiveness of growth equity’s risk-return profile - occupying the space between VC and PE buyouts - and its exposure...more
Beginning in 2023, an excise tax of 1% will apply to public company stock buybacks and a 15% corporate minimum tax generally will apply to corporations with book income exceeding $1 billion. Key Points: ..Public...more
On July 25, 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced insider trading charges against ten individual defendants across four separate cases (Bhardwaj, Goel, Markin, and Buyer), filed in the...more
In Stream T.V. Networks, Inc. v. SeeCubic, Inc., the Delaware Supreme Court (“Court”) held that section 271 of the Delaware General Corporation Law (“D.G.C.L”), which requires stockholder approval for a Delaware corporation...more
Albert Einstein is famously credited with saying, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." This adage comes to mind as defense counsel continue to resort to the same strategies for...more
On Friday, for the second week in a row, the Ninth Circuit reversed dismissal of a 401(k) plan excessive fee litigation challenging the offering of retail share classes of mutual funds instead of cheaper institutional share...more
On Friday, the Ninth Circuit became the first circuit court to rule in a 401(k) plan fee and investment litigation following the Supreme Court’s January 2022 decision in Hughes v. Northwestern University, 142 S. Ct. 737...more
Cooperation is frequently touted as the “secret sauce” that can help an issuer or individual facing potentially harsh regulatory scrutiny and sanctions for wrongful conduct mitigate the resolution of the action. Different...more
In 2021, there were 613 initial public offerings (“IPOs”) of Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (“SPACs”), after 248 SPACs went public in 2020 and 59 in 2019. Prior to 2021, there had not been more than 500 IPOs of any...more
The decision adopts enhanced scrutiny of director fiduciary duties for de-SPAC transactions, but suggests dismissal may be appropriate when stockholders exercise redemption rights on a fully informed basis. On January 3,...more
Following on from the FCA’s consultation on the effectiveness of the Primary Market, the FCA has published final rules on, amongst other things, free float and minimum market capitalisation, which come into force on 3...more
In Sacerdote v. New York University, a class of university employees who participated in Defendant’s 403(b) plans brought ERISA breach of fiduciary duty claims against Defendant, challenging the administration of its...more
Creative Uses of Collateral Present New Financing Opportunities for PE - Raising fresh capital for portfolio companies in times of financial stress is always a delicate balancing act between attracting new lenders and...more