Bargaining in the Shadow of Takeover Defenses

For decades, practitioners and academic commentators who believe that target boards should have broad discretion to resist hostile takeover attempts have put forward the “bargaining power hypothesis” to support their view. This hypothesis states that a target with strong takeover defenses will extract more in a negotiated acquisition than a target with weaker defenses, because the acquirer’s no-deal alternative, to make a hostile bid, is less attractive against a strong-defense target. The hypothesis helped usher in the modern era of takeover defenses: In endorsing the poison pill in Moran v. Household International, Inc., the Delaware