Post-Siliconix Freeze-outs: Theory and Evidence

Abstract

At approximately the same time that the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act increased the costs associated with being a public company, important Delaware case law created a difference in the standard of judicial review for the two basic methods of freezing out minority shareholders. While a freeze‐out executed as a statutory merger is subject to stringent “entire‐fairness” review, the Delaware Chancery Court held in In re Siliconix Shareholders Litigation that a freeze‐out executed as a tender offer is not. This paper presents the first systematic empirical evidence on post‐Siliconix freeze‐outs. Using a new database of all Delaware freeze‐outs executed in the 4 years after Siliconix was decided, I find that minority shareholders achieve significantly lower abnormal returns, on average, in tender‐offer freeze‐outs relative to merger freeze‐outs. I discuss the doctrinal and policy implications of these findings in a companion paper.