Law360 [$$] recently carried an analysis by a trio of Delaware attorneys regarding the impact of 2016’s prepayment amendment to Delaware appraisal law. Part of the August 2016 amendments allowed M&A targets to prepay dissenting shareholders an amount of their choosing, thereby stopping the accrual of interest on that portion of the merger price/amount at issue. At the time of the amendments, there was meaningful debate whether the new rules – including the prepayment option – would curtail appraisal filings, with some commentators suggesting that they may in fact increase appraisal filings, focusing on the prepayment option.
This more recent analysis considers the last year of appraisal, and while the authors note that a year of data is insufficient to “draw any firm conclusions,” their analysis shows that “in the year following the Aug. 1, 2016, effective date of the amendment, appraisal filings have continued to increase.” Echoing the pre-amendment analysis that the amendments may increase appraisal activity, the authors make note of the fact that as “appraisal litigation continues its upward trend despite the recent overall decline in M&A activity, this trend may suggest that, as discussed below, the prospect of prepayment is contributing to its continued rise.”
As previous analysis discussed, while prepayment may save on interest for a respondent company subject to appraisal, it otherwise frees up capital for investors to redeploy elsewhere – instead of having that capital ‘locked up’ in the appraisal action. Prepayment introduces additional strategic considerations in appraisal for both investors and respondent companies.