LPC Law Notes Private Acquisitions Notes
A collection of the best Mergers and Acquisitions* notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (an Oxford law graduate) could find after combing through dozens of LPC samples from outstanding students with the highest results in England and carefully evaluating each on accuracy, formatting, logical structure, spelling/grammar, conciseness and "wow-factor".
In short, these are what we believe to be the strongest set of Mergers and Acquisitions notes available in the UK this year. This collection is f...
The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Private Acquisitions Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:
Risk Allocation: Warranties, Indemnities & Representations
What does buyer want and why?
Reassurances about the nature & state of the company/business it is acquiring and some possibility of recompense if the acquisition turns out to be other than expected
Protections are not implied into a contract and therefore the general law affords very limited protection to a buyer
Share Purchase
Principle of caveat emptor applies (Buyer Beware)
Buyer will be inheriting indirectly all the liabilities of the target company, whether it knows about them or not
In the absence of express provisions, an aggrieved buyer has very little comeback on the seller unless a misrepresentation can be established
Asset Purchase
Buyer may get the benefit of some limited warranties under SOGA 1979
Buyer cherry picks the liabilities he inherits
Still will want additional express safeguards in the SPA
Warranties
Contractual statements about what is to be acquired
Helps elicit information about the business from the seller
Imposes a legal liability upon the sellers and provides the purchaser with a remedy if statements prove to be incorrect and the value of the company is reduced
Damages
Put the buyer in the position it would have been in had the contract been properly performed (contractual damages), subject to the duty to mitigate
Buyer’s loss will be the difference in value of the shares if the warranty had been true & their actual value
Hadley v Baxendale loss will be recoverable if it is not too remote
Loss which flows naturally from the breach
Loss which was fairly & reasonably in the contemplation of both parties, at the time they entered into the contract, as the probable result of the breach
Tax
If liability crystallises, an adjustment will be made to the price of the target for capital gains purposes
Consideration the seller received on completion will be reduced by the amount paid under the warranty claim
Who may be unwilling to give warranties
Minor shareholders
May not want to be exposed to risk of joint & several liability
Trustees
Will not want to be exposed to personal liability
Often limit trustees’ liability to net value for the time being of the trust capital
On completion, when the capital is distributed to the beneficiaries, have the beneficiaries give the warranties
Large shareholders with no management in target company
Cannot be expected to give promises in relation to matters about which they know nothing
Representations
Replies to a range of questions affecting the target & its business
Misrepresentation is a false statement of fact made by one party to the contract to the other, which induces the other party to enter into the contract
Remedies
Rescission
Aims at putting the parties back into the pre-contract position
Equitable remedy so not always available
Damages
Court has discretion to award
Can be awarded in lieu of rescission, but the right to rescind must not have been lost
Negligent & fraudulent...
Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Private Acquisitions Notes.
A collection of the best Mergers and Acquisitions* notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (an Oxford law graduate) could find after combing through dozens of LPC samples from outstanding students with the highest results in England and carefully evaluating each on accuracy, formatting, logical structure, spelling/grammar, conciseness and "wow-factor".
In short, these are what we believe to be the strongest set of Mergers and Acquisitions notes available in the UK this year. This collection is f...
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