CLIENT MEMORANDUM
Closing Your M&A Deal on a Weekend
October 28, 2015
In case you are wondering – no, this is not about making the closing more festive, or
planning for a champagne celebration after the closing.
As companies think about the timing of the closing, several key drivers are leading both the buyer and the
seller to strongly prefer a month-end closing (which could happen to fall on a weekend), especially:
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Accounting and systems issues with having a cut-off date that is not at month-end for
purposes of preparing the closing balance sheet or financial statements to be included in
future public filings
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The switch over of operational items and IT systems (with a weekend closing providing the
parties’ operational and IT teams with additional time to complete the switch over and
perform testing before the business re-opens)
Careful planning and structuring will be needed in order to accomplish a weekend closing (typically at
12:01 a.m. on a Saturday or Sunday). We are seeing this occur with increasing frequency, and different
structures and arrangements can be deployed to facilitate a weekend closing. None of these can occur
as a last minute afterthought, but rather will take advance planning and co-operation by the parties, their
advisers, financing sources and other transaction participants.
A primary item to focus on will be how to accomplish funding and payment of the purchase price on the
weekend, when Fed wires are not possible and banks are ordinarily closed.
A few examples of different
types of arrangement that we see being used, depending on the circumstances, are:
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Intra-bank transfer: Both seller and buyer having (or opening) a bank account at the same
bank (which may be the lead bank, where a bank financing is funding the purchase price),
and a transfer of the purchase price being effected intra-bank between the two bank accounts
at the time of the transaction closing over the weekend. This arrangement assumes the bank
is willing to co-operate in a weekend transfer of funds between accounts in that bank.
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Change of title to bank account: A new bank account is opened for purposes of the
transaction. That account is initially in the name of and controlled by buyer.
Buyer funds the
account with the purchase price and other closing payments on Friday. In anticipation of the
weekend closing, the parties prepare and execute an instrument changing title to and control
of the bank account to seller as of the time of closing. That instrument is released on the
weekend when the closing occurs, at which time the seller acquires legal ownership and
control of the deposited funds.
(Where buyer’s debt financing for the acquisition is to be
secured, additional complexity is involved including that the arrangement will need to include
perfecting a security interest in the bank account, which would be released at the moment of
closing.)
Where the closing involves a merger under state law that becomes effective through the filing of a
certificate of merger with the relevant state office, additional planning will be needed, for states like
Delaware, to file the certificate of merger with an effective time as of 12:01 a.m. on the weekend while
addressing the contingency that the closing may not occur.
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
davispolk.com
. If you have any questions regarding the matters covered in this publication, please contact any of the
lawyers listed below or your regular Davis Polk contact.
John Bick
212 450 4350
john.bick@davispolk.com
John Douglas
202 962 7126
212 450 4145
john.douglas@davispolk.com
Louis Goldberg
212 450 4539
louis.goldberg@davispolk.com
Randy Guynn
212 450 4239
randall.guynn@davispolk.com
Joseph Hadley
212 450 4007
joseph.hadley@davispolk.com
Lee Hochbaum
212 450 4736
lee.hochbaum@davispolk.com
Kirtee Kapoor
650 752 2025
212 450 4746
kirtee.kapoor@davispolk.com
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