25 February 2004
Welcome to the first 2004 edition of M&A Insights.
2003 was a very successful year for the Clayton Utz M&A team. The end of the year also saw a number of significant developments, particularly coming out of the Takeovers Panel and the ACCC.
In this Insights, we explain the impact of those changes for M&A players, with reference to the planning and execution of a transaction. The topics covered include:
By Rod Halstead and Michael Corrigan.
By John Elliott.
Strange but true: selling your 0.1% of a listed company to a majority shareholder may give you majority voting power in the company. John Elliott reports on ASIC proposals to overcome this and other bizarre side-effects of the "associate" provisions of the Corporations Act.
By Alison Groves.
S8's failed bid for Breakfree reveals potential differences between ASIC and the Takeovers Panel. Alison Groves says the Panel appears to take a more robust view on what bidders and targets should be allowed to tell the market in the battle for shareholders' hearts and minds.
By Will Moncrieff.
There is a common belief that the Takeovers Panel can't or won't intervene in takeover schemes of arrangement. Nicholas Mavrakis says that belief is a misconception. Its intervention in the National Can Industries public-to-private scheme shows that the Panel is quite prepared to force changes to the terms of a scheme.
A consistent flow of leading roles across our national offices coupled with our involvement on four of the year's top 10 deals and almost half of the year's top 15 deals saw us ranked strongly on the Thomson Financial Mergers and Acquisitions Legal Advisor League Tables for 2003.
