Tag: Earnouts
Learning Old Lessons From Recent Life Sciences Earnout Disputes: Above All Else, Words Matter
There’s an old saying – “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” While this mantra may help bruised egos on the playground, it’s of no use in M&A disputes. Three recent Delaware Court of Chancery rulings on earnout disputes demonstrate that the contractual post-closing […]
4 Tips for Drafting Earnouts To Avoid Disputes
Amid a somewhat sluggish mergers and acquisitions market, and as buyers seek to scoop up companies at a discount while sellers long for the sky-high valuations of 2020 and 2021, the earnout is having a moment. To learn more about tips on drafting earnouts to avoid disputes please see the […]
Cooley’s 2023 Life Sciences M&A Year in Review: Potent Mix of Creativity and Resilience Spurs Activity Heading Into 2024
In a subdued year for global M&A, dealmaking in the life sciences industry came in waves, with a busy fourth quarter generating cautious optimism heading into 2024. While the year saw an overall decline in M&A activity (down 17% from 2022), total pharmaceuticals and life sciences deal value in 2023 […]
Cooley’s 2021 Life Sciences M&A Year in Review
General trends in life sciences M&A Although the COVID-19 pandemic that defined 2020 continued to shape much of the life sciences industry in 2021, the way that it did was markedly different. While 2020’s M&A landscape was characterized by whiplash volatility from choppy deal activity in the first half of […]
Cooley’s 2020 Life Sciences M&A Year in Review
General Trends in Life Sciences M&A If 2019 was the year of life sciences mega-deals, 2020 was the year of COVID-19, as the global pandemic permeated every aspect of the dealmaking landscape, with the life sciences sector being no exception. COVID-19 drove unprecedented levels of collaboration among biopharmaceutical companies seeking […]
Cooley’s 2019 Life Sciences M&A Year in Review
2019 was a banner year for billion-dollar life sciences M&A transactions. A wave of big-ticket transactions by global pharmaceutical companies drove life sciences M&A activity to its fourth-largest year on record in 2019, with aggregate deal value in the pharmaceutical, medical and biotech industry reaching $234.2 billion – almost double […]
Use of Earn-Outs to “Bridge” the Valuation Gap
There’s an old saying, probably at some point attributed to Abraham Lincoln or Einstein, that a bridge shows no allegiance to either side. It’s a wonderful metaphor and one that dealmakers would be wise to remember when working to construct agreements to solve for divergent views on value. What two […]
The Cooley Outlook for 2018 M&A
What’s on tap for 2018 M&A? A recap of 2017 trends and the Cooley outlook on this year’s dealmaking: Buying Innovation: Retention and Non-Competes. For both old-line companies and tech giants, innovation is the name of the game. It is often difficult for large companies to foster innovation organically for […]
The Art of Drafting Milestones for an Earn-Out
Former stockholders of SARcode Bioscience were recently denied a claim that they were entitled to be paid $425 million in milestone payments under a merger agreement. The decision provides an anecdotal lesson in drafting milestones and suggests that the more technically prescribed milestones may be more difficult to meet, even […]
Monetizing an Earn-Out – Does That Make It a “Security?”
In life sciences/medical technology transactions, buyers and sellers often use milestone-based and sometimes royalty-based contingent consideration to compensate sellers for assets that are in various stages of development from clinical- to development-stage to product commercialization.[1] In licensing transactions, there is an established secondary market through which licensors may monetize their […]