CONTROL TRANSACTIONS TAKE CENTER STAGE

Hon. E. Norman Veasey L’57, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware, makes point on corporate law in his state.

More than 30 scholars examined the intricate world of corporate takeovers from a wide range of angles during a two-day symposium in February on Control Transactions.

Sponsored by the ILE and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, with support from the Saul A. Fox Research Endowment and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the forum featured papers and commentaries on issues such as “Managerial Incentives,” “Controlling Shareholders,” and “Checks and Balances on Corporate Law: Institutional and Bankruptcy.”

In his keynote address, Hon. E. Norman Veasey L’57, Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Delaware, offered his views on corporate governance, Delaware’s application of corporate law, and astute commentary on many of the papers presented at the symposium.

Edward B. Rock, Saul A. Fox Distinguished Professor of Business Law at Penn Law, and Marcel Kahan, professor of law at New York University School of Law School, presented a paper entitled “Corporate Constitutionalism: Anti- Takeover Charter Provisions as Precommitment.” Michael L. Wachter, William B. Johnson Professor of Law and Economics at Penn Law, and Richard E. Kihlstrom, Ervin Miller-Arthur M. Freedman Professor of Finance and Economics at the Wharton School, presented a paper called “Managing to Market Anomalies versus Maximizing Corporate Value: The Essential Tension in Takeover Law.”

Other Penn Law participants included Professor of Law David A. Skeel, Jr., who presented “Creditors’ Ball: The ‘New’ New Corporate Governance in Chapter 11,” and Professor of Law and Real Estate Michael S. Knoll, who served as a commentator.

CORPORATE LAW PUT ON TABLE FOR DISCUSSION

Gupta and Balotti take part in discussion.

Mergers and the New Federalism were the focus of an ILE roundtable on corporate law that brought together an esteemed mix of academics, attorneys, business executives and judges to the law school last April.

Edward B. Rock, Saul A. Fox Distinguished Professor of Business Law, and Michael L. Wachter, William B. Johnson Professor of Law and Economics, moderated the panel “Mergers of Equals: Do They Exist? Should the Law Treat Them Differently?” Rock and Wachter are co-directors of the Institute for Law and Economics.

Participants included David M. Silk L’88, a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, Joseph Gatto L’84, managing director at Goldman Sachs & Co., and Raj Gupta, CEO, Rohm and Haas; and R. Franklin Balotti, director at Richards, Layton & Finger.