Takeovers

Prof.

This paper offers the first study of the shareholder welfare effects of poison pills and control share acquisition statutes in a research design that can support causal inference. We examine a series of four events between 2004 and 2010 that suddenly and exogenously changed the legality of poison pills and control share acquisition statutes for a peculiar class of company known as a closed-end fund. In the first two events, a court held for the first time that these defenses were legal under the Investment Company Act of 1940.