Management Buyout - Overview

Overview

Management buyouts are similar in all major legal aspects to any other acquisition of a company. The particular nature of the MBO lies in the position of the buyers as managers of the company, and the practical consequences that follow from that. In particular, the due diligence process is likely to be limited as the buyers already have full knowledge of the company available to them. The seller is also unlikely to give any but the most basic warranties to the management, on the basis that the management know more about the company than the sellers do and therefore the sellers should not have to warrant the state of the company.

Some concerns about management buyouts are that the asymmetric information possessed by management may offer them unfair advantage relative to current owners. The impending possibility of an MBO may lead to principal–agent problems, moral hazard, and perhaps even the subtle downward manipulation of the stock price prior to sale via adverse information disclosure, including accelerated and aggressive loss recognition, public launching of questionable projects, and adverse earning surprises. Naturally, such corporate governance concerns also exist whenever current senior management is able to benefit personally from the sale of their company or its assets. This would include, for example, large parting bonuses for CEOs after a takeover or management buyout.

Since corporate valuation is often subject to considerable uncertainty and ambiguity, and since it can be heavily influenced by asymmetric or inside information, some question the validity of MBOs and consider them to potentially represent a form of insider trading.

The mere possibility of an MBO or a substantial parting bonus on sale may create perverse incentives that can reduce the efficiency of a wide range of firms—even if they remain as public companies. This represents a substantial potential negative externality.