What an approriate post in the run-up to tonight’s Champions League clashes between Arsenal/Dortmund and Chelsea/Schalke: If you were a supporter and/or shareholder (which may or may not be the same thing) of Borussia Dortmund, could you hold the club’s management responsible for not having transferred Robert Lewandowski to Bayern for a hefty fee this season, rather than letting him join the arch-rivals for free next summer? If you though that Bayern München spending EUR 37,000,000 to sign Mario Goetze was madness, would that argument have legs in a court room? Read More
Category: Corporate Litigation
Porsche Plaintiffs’ Tour de Germany: Last Exit Braunschweig?
The hedge funds seeking billions of Euros in damages from Porsche’s failed Volkswagen take-over still have not found a court willing to assume jurisdicton to hear their matter: Having started out in Stuttgart, or even in New York, they have been on a trip that looked as if it had ended in Hannover, when the Braunschweig District Court (Landgericht) transferred the matter to Hannover District Court on the basis that the plantiffs relied on competition law theories. Read More
Update: German Takeover Rules – Damages and the Failure to Make Mandatory Offer
Last week, I reported on the Federal Supreme Court’s judgment that denied claims of individual investors if a controlling shareholder fails to make a mandatory offer. Ulrich Wackerbarth, a corporate law professor and blogger* at the Corporate BLawG, has published a fundamental critique of the judgment: No rights of private action – basta! Read More
Porsche Hedge Fund Litigation: Set-back for Claimants, as Inspection of Files in Criminal Investigation is Denied
We have covered the Porsche hedge fund litigation here before. One of the challenges that the claimants face is to built their case of market manipulation, given the restrictions of German civil procedure. As Karin Mattusek, who covers the Porsche litigation for Bloomberg Law, put it: “Porsche Plaintiffs Seek $5 Billion With Limited Tools”. The claimants do not have access, through pre-trial discovery or disclosure, to documents and emails that record Porsche’s internal communication and decision making process, but still have the full burden of proof. Read More