“Following the announcement of Apple’s purchase of AuthenTec on Friday, a pair of law firms are ‘investigating’ the security company’s board of directors for possible breaches of fiduciary responsibility,” Mikey Campbell reports for AppleInsider.
“Law firms Levi & Korsinsky and Rigrodsky & Long, P.A. are looking to wrangle shareholder class action lawsuits on allegations that AuthenTec’s board of directors purposely undervalued the company in its $356 millon sale to Apple,” Campbell reports. “Documents released by the two law firms note an investigation is currently underway and ask for shareholders to sign up for representation if a class action suit is indeed initiated.”
Campbell reports, “According to the firm, the “investigation concerns whether the AuthenTec Board of Directors breached their fiduciary duties to AuthenTec stockholders by failing to adequately shop the Company before entering into this transaction and whether Apple is underpaying for AuthenTec shares, thus unlawfully harming AuthenTec stockholders.”
Read more in the full article here.
Damn Ambulance Chasers!!
So sad really!
The kind of lawyers that give the other 95% a bad name.
You have that reversed. Makes the decent 5% look bad.
No he’s right. Most lawyers don’t do this kind of crap. It’s like everything else. You don’t hear about the normal run of the mill cases. You only hear about the ones that are wacky. So everyone calls for tort reform. You also don’t hear all the details of a case. You might hear that a woman sues McDonalds for spilling hot coffee on herself, but the little detail missing is that she had 3rd degree burns. You hear that a moron mowed down innocent people in a theater with a semi-automatic rifle. You don’t hear that the other 100 million people with guns didn’t. Normal life is boring. We look for what’s crazy.
Q: what do you call a bunch of lawyers at the bottom of the deep blue sea?
A: a good start.
Q: Why don’t sharks ever attack lawyers?
A: Professional courtesy.
Q: Why did the lawyer cross the road?.
A: To chase an ambulance.
Q: What do you have when you have a lawyer buried up to their neck in sand?
A: not enough sand.
They see Apple’s deep deep pockets and want a bigger cut now.
Lawyers always want their cut!
Jew&Jew and Jew&Jew&Co wants always extra.If I remember it right there was already 58% premium for this purchase.
Apple offered 58% over the value of the stock. What is undervalued about that?
When Instagram is worth $1 Billion, anything’s possible I suppose.
instagram was grossly overpriced.
Exactly my point.
Have they been talking to ProView’s CEO?
How can offering far more than the stock price be undervaluing? And, the deal hasn’t closed, someone can offer more. Talk about stupidity.
Kill the lawyers. A side benefit is that some are also politicians. Two turds with one stone.
I like your thinking…. between those people and the “speculators” line em up!!
have eithethic you had the experience of actually killing another human being?
“Kill” is probably a little extreme, and if I could I would simply zap them to another dimension where they could lead their tawdry lives to their hearts content.
Maybe the lawyers are in “another dimension.”
Uh-oh!
Actually the number of lawyers who are politicians is at an all time low. Maybe that’s the problem.
Nothing to be concerned about.
There are a bunch of law firms that live on these typs of things. It’s how they create havoc and makes money. Really sad. As the article states the law firm starts the investigation in order to find out if there are any money to be made and ask share holder that think the world circles around them to sign up. Again. Very sad. One of the disappointing things about America.
While I think this is a BS suit, if Apple offered a premium above the trading price, you have a mistake in your theory.
The world does circle around the share holders of a publicly traded company. It’s their money and they own the value represented by the stock price. Supposedly the Board of Directors is in place to guide company management in a direction that will maximize that value.
Unfortunately, many Boards and Executive suites are made up of the same crowd of insider cronies, Boards are made up of executives from other companies who scratch each others backs. Example, executive compensation, they all agree they are worth 400x the average worker’s salary, even though that multiple is only 25x in the rest of the first world. And they get the compensation no matter what the company performance outcomes are, so they effectively drain the coffers with their compensation while not earning their keep.
So it falls to law firms looking to make a buck to play the leadership role in keeping the crookecutives at bay. The class action will be against the BoD of AuthenTec. For Apple to be involved, they would have to prove some collusion between Apple and the BoD. That would be like accusing Apple of price fixing e-books. How likely is that?
This won’t go very far, with the added amount that Apple paid for this company it’s just a scare tatic without the scare.
Also, any class action suite wouldn’t stop the acquisition of the company.
As others had mentioned, the lawyers are sticking their hands out with the hope of getting hush money to make this go away, Apple won’t back down and with all due respect they sould push to have this bogus accusation stopped.
Funny how it’s put that “if” it proceeds and “if” thus or “if” that.
These’s despicable and unrighteous Lawyers should be sanctioned If during the course of the investigation are found to be using the legal system as a crutch to extort money from Apple or AuthenTec’s Board member’s in such a way just to enrich themselves by using the legal system disingenuously.
+1
This is capitalism at work, why the harsh critizims for money-driven lawyers?
In capitalism, it matters not how you make it, it all spends the same.
Wonder who paid the law firms to start the investigations? Someone had to initiate it.
That’s the problem the lawyers have: they need someone to initiate the class action. These lawyers see an opportunity to make money then call around shareholders to try to convince them to get on board. The lawyers then get them to sign up to a deal whereby the lawyers take the lion’s share of the money they make in the class action, and the shareholders will make pretty much nothing.
First, they need to convince the shareholders there’s money to be made. The risk is that if Apple doesn’t think it’s worth the extra hassle then they could just walk away from the deal and the shareholders lose out.
Probably another pathetic attempt by RIM lol
This is essentially standard these days, happens with every acquisition of a publically-held company
Sour grapes from google and Samsung, but they set this up as they didn’t get to buy the company.
Why are these traitor law firms allowed to hurt and harass apple that has been good to America and been an example world wide as to how things should be one. Why us the soldiers who fight Taliban be sent to these law firms and kill the traitors lawyers in the name and honour of national security.
How many investors would turn down a 68% return? If anyone wants my Apple shares with that return rate let me know. The price would be $982 per share. And I won’t sue anyone later.
No comment.
Sometimes, we of the MDN flock are more mindless and uninformed than those we persecute.
So true.
The silly thing about these “investigations” is that the Board of Directors is going to get a payout as well. They likely will be replaced by hand-picked members of Apple, so they are looking out for themselves as well as the shareholders. I seriously doubt they would leave money on the table or out of their own pockets.
Plus, they don’t just evaluate the money offered. There is also the issue of the company’s likelihood of continuing. The other supposed suitors may just want to buy the company to keep Apple from doing so, but would shut it down, lay off employees, etc., which may not be in the company’s ultimate best interests either.
There are plenty of shysters out there, in the legal profession as well as many others (cough…JP Morgan), and these guys may fit the bill.
However, think about who your first call will be to when you or a family member is harmed or when you’re charged with a serious crime…of which you’re innocent of course. Your mom? Try representing yourself in court. See how well that goes. Perhaps you should start studying for your JD now?
Just sayin’.
Heres the thing…..if you go represent yourself in a very straight forward case such a harm to a family member or an accusation to serious crime to which you can prove your innocence, the judge will be biased because you are not using a lawyer….you get stonewalled and found guilty even though it is pretty obvious innocence is beyond doubt.
Example: guy tweets that he will blow up the airport if that said airport does not sort it’s shit out.
Result: hire a lawyer to get you out of bogus terrorist charges even though it’s bloody obvious the guy is not going to do any such thing!
If the guy had gone on to plead his case as one of obvious “cultural/ slang humor” (that everyone uses everyday) he would have lost without a lawyer. I mean how many times have you said to you son…”get your homework done or I will kill you”. Do I really have to hire a layer to prove that I was not going to kill my son?
The legal system is setup so that you are subservient to the profession as well as the laws.