Corporate & Securities Law

Unsealed: Yahoo's Tin Parachute

By broc

Unsealed: Yahoo's Tin Parachute

The media has had a field day ever since Delaware Chancery Court's Chancellor Chandler unsealed this amended complaint filed against Yahoo, particularly because Carl Icahn is involved as he pressures Yahoo to sell; see this DealBook post which includes Icahn's latest demand letter. The lawsuit charges that Yahoo's directors breached their fiduciary duties by their actions, including failing to negotiate a deal with Microsoft and enacting a broad employee severance plan.

Professor Steven Davidoff describes the tin parachute plan in quite some detail - and analyzes the arrangement, plus links to two other blogs that do the same - in his "DealBook" blog. Here is an excerpt from his blog:

The plan provides that if an employee with Yahoo is terminated by Yahoo without “cause” or by the employee for “good reason” within two years after Microsoft acquires a controlling interest in Yahoo, the employee will receive (among other things):

(1) his or her annual base salary over a designated number of months ranging from four months to 24 months, depending on the employee’s job level; and

(2) accelerated vesting of all stock options, restricted stock units and any other equity-based awards previously granted.

Under the plan, good reason means any “substantial adverse alteration” in an employee’s duties or responsibilities during the two years following the change of control.

As a measure of the market, the argument that this plan is “egregious” seems primarily related to the cash severance component, not the equity acceleration. The latter feature is quite common even on a single-trigger basis (in which the equity is accelerated immediately upon a change of control or on a modified basis, permitting the executive to leave the company after one year and benefit from this provision).

But single-trigger provisions are becoming much less common. And under the Yahoo plan, both these payments have a double trigger: There must be an acquisition by Microsoft and then a subsequent termination of the employee. This is what you would expect for a tin parachute — slang for a change-in-control plan that covers all employees.

Still, it is less common to permit rank-and-file employees to benefit under the plan if they decide to leave the company for “good reason.” Typically, they only get a benefit if they are terminated without “cause.” But here, the definition of “good reason” is narrower than you would typically see for a corporate executive, though it still gives some rights to the employees to walk away. This is the part of the plan that is most aggressive. And the complaint is right that the definition of good reason could provide substantial leeway for Yahoo’s employees to walk.

Full post as published by DealLawyers.com Blog on June 09, 2008 (boomark / email).