Corporate, Securities, And Governance

Public reporting company status is traditionally prestigious, increases access to capital, improves liquidity and enables more favorable financing terms and opportunities. Yet public reporting company status exposes companies to the glare of public scrutiny and burdensome compliance obligations, often before they are ready to shoulder those responsibilities and sometimes without raising much capital or increasing liquidity and financing opportunities appreciably. In the meantime, the private equity markets increasingly dwarf the public markets and provide the overwhelming amount of capital markets investment. This article addresses the question of when should companies go public, and when should they stay private.

This article focuses on the third of the three principal types of transaction structures used in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), Mergers, which means not a generic kind of business combination, but “statutory Mergers” executed pursuant to one or more states’ merger statutes, in which one company merges into another. Following the discussion are “Deal Points” on important considerations in the purchase or sale of a business: what to do, and what at all costs not to do.

This article focuses on the antitrust (competition) issues that can arise in US mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions, for which certain U.S. government agencies exercise oversight, what must be done to obtain their approval for those transactions to close, and the direction of government policy on antitrust M&A review, which has shifted under the Biden administration from a decades-long relatively “hands-off,” tolerant, laissez-faire policy to a markedly more interventionist, activist policy, which all dealmakers must be aware of and account for in planning and structuring their transactions. Following the discussion are “Deal Points” on important considerations in the purchase or sale of a business: what to do, and what at all costs not to do.