Sale of Private & Public Companies by Auction

The use of auction-styled' procedures in the mergers and acquisitions field is gaining increased prominence. The term auction' is possibly misleading as, in most cases, there is no formal auction process. Instead, bidding arrangements are handled more like a formal tender. There is evidence that not only are auctions becoming a more popular method of selling a company but also that these procedures are no longer the private domain of investment banks; that, increasingly, lawyers are taking a prominent role in these matters. To test the level of awareness of auction bids, the level of sophistication of practices and procedures which have grown up around auction bids and the level of both specific and general regulatory control in this field, a questionnaire was circulated to lawyers within a number of jurisdictions covering both Europe and North America. This work is a compilation of the reports received from those lawyers together with a final report which attempts to draw those reports together.