Freeze-out transactions have been subject to different standards of judicial review in Delaware since 2001, when the chancery court, in In re Siliconix Inc. Shareholders Litigation, held that, unlike merger freeze-outs, tender offer freeze-outs were not subject to “entire fairness review”....

Freeze-out transactions, in which a controlling shareholder buys out the minority shareholders, have occurred more frequently since the stock market downturn of 2000 and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. While freeze-outs were historically executed as statutory mergers, recent Delaware case law...

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...