Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Mergers and Acquisitions

Doing a little BizOrging today, and I was looking over the notes Mr. Mad Dog so graciously provided, when I discovered something odd. Not with the notes themselves, which are phenomenal, but with the law of corporations in general. The topic for today (or Monday, I suppose) is "Minority Shareholder Oppression." This addresses the problem in corporations where the majority of shareholders control the power in a corporation because they elect the board of directors and dominate all matters subject to a shareholder vote.

One of the examples of such oppression was the following note:

d. Majority puts “squeeze” on minority to sell shares at low price (or eat them)

Now, I don't know that much about business, and I really don't know much about the law that governs it. But somehow it just seems morally objectionable for majority shareholders to eat minority shareholders as a means to maintain control over a corporation. I'm not a fan of cannibalism in general, but to employ it as a business tactic? Sure, it reduces competition, but surely we have to draw the line somewhere.....

5 comments:

Johnny Utah said...

Yeah, I draw the line at drinking the blood of children.

Vice said...

Are you implying that I am the problem here, Elise? I'm not the one devouring my business counterparts whole rather than allowing them take part in the business.

Vice said...

No, I am not implying anything. After all, do you have any business counterparts? No. Why? Because you ate them all.

Ismael Tapia II said...

My outlines are making the rounds, and i've gotten a few compliments on their thoroughness, which i greatly appreciate. Further, i sincerely hope that they help you all out.

Still, they're not perfect. Apparently, my TnE outline contains the following line in reference to some complicated doctrine or another:
"It's complicated, and i don't care"

Anonymous said...

Mergers and Acquisitions are conditions almost always used together in the corporate world to make reference to two or more organizations becoming a member of to type one business. More often than not a merging is where two businesses of approximately equivalent size and durability come together to type a single business. Both companies' shares are combined into one.

Mergers Acquisitions