The Securities Law Blog provides commentary and news on the latest securities law developments impacting established and emerging growth publicly-traded issuers and investment banks, as well as entrepreneurs and venture-backed private entities. Our blog closely follows SEC rulemaking in several key areas including public and private securities offerings, shareholder activism and equity investment, and mergers & acquisitions.
The authors of this blog are members of the Corporate/Securities practice of Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP. Since our founding, this firm has been distinguished by responsive, independent and client-focused legal services provided by lawyers with a profound commitment to the companies they serve. This blog is an outgrowth of this representation of our clients in a wide range of capital market transactions.
The SEC staff will be actively monitoring the extent to which public companies and other market participants are identifying and addressing risks associated with the expected discontinuation of LIBOR, a common system of interest rates for financial transactions, past 2021.
On June 27, 2019, the Delaware Chancery Court entered an injunction requiring the boards of trustees of two closed-end investment funds (the “Funds”) to count the votes in favor of director candidates nominated by shareholder Saba Capital at the annual meetings scheduled for July 8, 2019. Saba Capital had timely given notice of its nominations in compliance with the Funds’ advance notification bylaws. In a response weeks later, the Funds asked that the nominees complete a supplemental questionnaire, which had “nearly one hundred questions over forty-seven pages, and was due in five business days.” The Funds declared the nominations invalid after Saba Capital missed the five-day deadline for submitting the questionnaires. In the case captioned Saba Capital Master Fund, Ltd. v. BlackRock Credit Allocation Income Trust, et al., Vice Chancellor Zurn granted Saba Capital’s request for injunctive relief, finding that the Funds’ rejection of the nominations submitted by Saba Capital violated the Funds’ bylaws. As discussed in this Client Alert, the Court’s ruling is consistent with views recently expressed by Olshan that overzealous defense advisors continue to “cross the line” by using onerous, overbroad questionnaires as traps to thwart shareholder nominations and chill activist campaigns.