"Shareholder Primacy" in Delaware Still Only Matters When Buyers Benefit

Steven Davidoff notes, For Wall Street Deal Makers, Sometimes It Pays to Be Bad. He focuses on J.Crew’s $3 billion buyout management buyout and Del Monte Foods’ $5.3 billion acquisition by KKR, Vestar Capital Partners and Centerview Capital. Davidoff notes that a Delaware court found J Crew management's behavior to be “icky” and another Delaware court heavily criticized the Del Monte deal.  Nonetheless, the deals went forward.  

Davidoff says that the current state of the law makes it hard to come up with a penalty to to deal with bad behavior.  He explains: 

[T]he problem is what to do about the penalty. Depriving shareholders of a buyout, even at a bad price, would punish them.

He's right, but if you go back to poison pill cases, see, e.g., the Airgas decision, you can see that Delaware courts are willing to deprive shareholders of a buyout, as long as management wants to keep the deal from shareholders, even for an all-cash deal.  As I have noted before, "I can't see a good justification for not presenting an all-cash offer to shareholders once . . . ample time has been given to entice other potential bidders into the game." 

Anyway, I share Professor Davidoff's view that we need a good penalty, but I happen to think the big issue is that there is a lack of willingness, not ability.  I mean, Delaware courts are really, really good at this corporate governance thing.

Maybe the answer to create a sort of shareholder's business judgment rule for all-cash deals.  That is, after adequate time for gathering other offers has passed, we add a blanket rule that all, all-cash deals that offer a premium over the current trading price will be presented to shareholders (along with management's explanantions and recommendations). This would operate like a sort of all-cash Revlon trigger. I can imagine a scenario where shareholders might choose the wrong option in such a case, but I think part of shareholder primacy includes, from time to time, respecting possible shareholder stupidity. 

--JPF