Legal News

Despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, 2020 saw an eruption of IPOs by special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), used to raise nearly $79 billion from investors. The Wall Street Journal reports that the trend is continuing in 2021, already averaging five new SPACs each business day. A surge in related litigation has already begun, and it can be expected to grow and become a feature of SPAC deals throughout 2021....By: McGuireWoods LLP

Baseline HSR threshold now $92 million The Hart-Scott-Rodino Act requires that parties to certain transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, acquisitions of voting securities, and assets and minority investments, file notifications with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission and observe a statutory waiting period if the transaction meets specified size-of-person and size-of-transaction thresholds and does not fall within an exemption....By: Cooley LL...

On February 1, 2021, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced in the Federal Register that the dollar-based thresholds applicable to the Hart-Scott-Rodino (“HSR”) premerger notification program will be lowered about 2.1 percent from the 2020 levels. As a result, the HSR minimum size-of-transaction threshold will be lowered to US$92.0 million from US$94.0 million. Transactions…...By: Dechert LLP

On Feb. 1, 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced it is publishing revised reporting thresholds for premerger filings under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (HSR Act). For the first time in a decade, the filing thresholds declined....By: McGuireWoods LLP

On January 22, 2021, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy has published the anticipated draft revision of the German Foreign Trade and Payments Ordinance to align the scope of review more closely with the EU Screening Regulation. The Ministry launched a consultation process the same day and is giving the associations and companies potentially affected the opportunity to discuss their views and propose further revisions....By: White & Case LLP

Bank M&A across Europe comes to a boil—the COVID-19 pandemic has hastened the confluence of conducive conditions for mega domestic mergers. Spain and the Balkans lead the charge, with Italy, Germany, France, Poland and the UK expected to follow....By: White & Case LLP

Moved by Covid’s bite out of the energy industry, oil behemoths ExxonMobil and Chevron Corp. have held talks about joining forces, “testing the water for what could be one of the largest corporate mergers ever.”...By: Robins Kaplan LLP

The European Court of Justice has confirmed that financial investors can incur parental liability for the anticompetitive practices of portfolio companies, even after an IPO that left the investor holding only a minority stake in the company, provided that they still have sufficient representation at the board of directors. This judgment is of major interest…...By: Dechert LLP

The legal cannabis market is still in its infancy and there is much more room to grow. At the end of 2020, we saw an uptick in merger and acquisition activity as the industry shook off some pandemic-related instability, and we expect that trend to increase significantly in 2021......By: Fox Rothschild LLP

After nearly a decade of growth, global M&A activity in the first quarter of 2020 was down 39.1% by deal value year over year — comparable to levels seen in the first quarter of 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis. The chilling effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of the year translated to a significant backlog of M&A transactions. Approaching the end of 2020, however, dealmaking returned in full force, despite the ongoing human challenges imposed by the pandemic. Coupled.....