This paper revisits the proposal to use options in corporate bankruptcy that was put forward in Bebchuk (1988). According to the proposed procedure, corporate bankruptcy should be implemented through the distribution to participants of appropriately designed options. The paper starts by...

This paper develops a rent-protection theory of corporate ownership structure - and in particular, of the choice between concentrated and dispersed ownership of corporate shares and votes. The paper analyzes the decision of a company's initial owner whether to maintain a lock on control when the...

In many disputes, the expected value to the plaintiff from going to trial is negative, either because the chances of winning are small or because the litigation costs are large. While such a plaintiff would not go to trial, he might sue in the hope of extracting a settlement offer: the defendant...

Firms going public have increasingly been incorporating antitakeover provisions in their IPO charters, while shareholders of existing companies have increasingly been voting in opposition to such charter provisions. This paper identifies possible explanations for this empirical pattern....

This paper argues that once undistorted shareholder choice is ensured -- which can be done by making it necessary for hostile bidders to win a vote of shareholder support -- boards should not have veto power over takeover bids. The paper considers all of the arguments that have been offered for...

A basic question for the design of bankruptcy law concerns whether value should be divided in accordance with absolute priority. Research done in the past decade has suggested that deviations from absolute priority have beneficial ex ante effects. In contrast, this paper shows that ex post...

When the cost of a suit exceeds the expected judgment, will a potential plaintiff be able to extract any amount in settlement from the defendant? If so, what is the source of the plaintiff's ability to extract a settlement? This essay discusses existing theories as to why (and when) plaintiffs...

This essay surveys the literature on Chapter 11. I start by discussing the objectives by which the performance of corporate reorganization rules is to be judged and then consider the fundamental problem of valuation that arises in corporate reorganization. I next turn to examine the performance...