In Eastern Platinum Limited v. Ren, 2024 BCCA 109, the BC Court of Appeal confirmed that where one activist shareholder’s proxy fight and subsequent derivative action fails, another shareholder represented by the same legal counsel can successfully obtain
activist investors
Unitholder Democracy Prevails in a “Good Hard Look” at Board Decision Making
On February 1, 2023, our Special Situations team successfully obtained an order from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) requiring that…
TSX Confirms Voting Agreements May Require Security Holder Approval
On February 27, 2023, the Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”) published Staff Notice 2023-0001 – Voting Agreements (the “Staff Notice”), which formalizes the policy on how it has been addressing voting agreements between TSX-listed issuers and their…
ESG & Shareholder Activism: Ready or Not, Here it Comes
“ESG” stands for Environmental, Social and Governance and describes a handful of criteria used by both issuers and investors to focus on a corporation’s impact and activity regarding topics like environmental protection, climate change, support for the local and global…
Webinar – Corporate governance, shareholder activism, and hostile M&A: Key developments in 2018 and a look ahead
Walied Soliman and Orestes Pasparakis, co-chairs of Norton Rose Fulbright’s Canadian Special Situations team, will host a 60-minute webinar on corporate governance, shareholder activism, and hostile M&A on Tuesday, February 12, 2019 at 12 p.m. EST. To sign up, please
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Implications of the Collaborative Model of Corporate Governance
In a recent paper, Jill Fisch and Simone Sepe outline a new model for corporate governance: the Insider-Shareholder Collaborative model.
A Shift Towards Collaboration
Two models have previously dominated the corporate governance discourse: (i) the management-power model and (ii)…
Kingsdale Releases 2018 Proxy Season Review
Kingsdale Advisors has released its annual Proxy Season Review for 2018. The Review examines trends observed in 2018, predicts issues on the horizon, and provides advice to both issuers and activists in the marketplace.
In what follows, we pick out…
Activists knocking on the door
The Canadian Real Estate sector may be in for a shake-up. Reuters recently reported (here) that activists may be eyeing real estate investment trusts (REITs), and their approximate combined C$67 billion in market capitalization, as ripe…
Fasten your seatbelts: preparing for the globalization of hedge fund activists
Activist hedge funds have grown up and gone global, reinforcing the need for companies of all shapes and sizes to plan ahead for the possibility of an attack. A recent article by Martin Lipton in the Harvard Law School Forum…
The drivers and consequences of settlement agreements in proxy fights
Activist interventions are being increasingly resolved by way of settlement agreements, with 3% of activist interventions in 2000 having resulted in a settlement agreement versus 16% in 2011.[1] In light of this emerging trend, the Columbia Business School recently…