How Lawyers Help Bring Your Acquisition Deal to Fruition

Fenwick corporate practice chair Alan Smith spoke to Extra Crunch​, a TechCrunch publication, about the details involved in an acquisition, from checking the validity of the offer to checking the financial health of the target company, negotiating a price and terms and clearing it with the boards and stockholders.

Smith also discussed how lawyers can serve as key business partners during the M&A process.

“We’ll have a structuring discussion. There are multiple ways you can buy a company,” he told the publication. “As a public company, it could be a tender offer or a merger. As a private company, it can be a share purchase, a merger or an asset sale. There could be tax, shareholder approval and contract consent issues that go along with all of those structures. So you’ll have trade-offs about which one might be optimal, and we’re heavily involved in advising and negotiating with the buyer around what they want to do.”

The full article is available on Extra Crunch​ (subscription required).