Articles Posted in Corporations

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One of my clients is a medium sized manufacturing plant here in San Jose. Although not a high-tech business, they have extensive capital assets and specialized skills. The business is being run by the second generation of family members, and the third generation is now being trained to take the reins someday. The family has recognized that many of their competitors are still being run by the first generation of owners, and it does not look like those businesses are likely to transition to other family members. As the owners of the competitive businesses age and want to retire, they will be looking to sell their manufacturing plants. My client wants to buy them. We recently sat down and discussed acquisition strategies. I explained that there are two common ways to buy a business – either you buy the stock, or you buy the assets. What most people do not realize, is that even when you are only buying the assets, you could be liable for up to three times the purchase price in state taxes that should have been paid by the seller.

Most people know that when you buy the stock of a corporation (or membership interests in an LLC), you get all of the assets as well as all of the liabilities in that company. As a result, many of my clients want to buy only the assets of a company as a strategy to avoid the liabilities (known and unknown) that come with a business with history behind it. To accomplish this, we draft an asset purchase agreement that includes lists of which assets we are buying, which liabilities we are buying, and which liabilities we are not taking on. For example, when you buy the stock of a company, you get all of its employees including their accrued and unpaid vacation time. When you buy the assets of a company, we ask the selling business to terminate all of its employees so that we can start over by hiring them in the acquiring company as new employees, without any potential claims for what came before. However, many people do not realize that certain tax liabilities may follow the business of the company rather than the company itself. So, if you buy enough of the assets to be considered as having purchased the company, you could be buying tax liabilities… even if they are on your list of items excluded from the sale.

Each of the Franchise Tax Board (state franchise and income taxes), the Board of Equalization (sales taxes) and the Employer Development Department (employment taxes) has the right to come after the buyer of a business for unpaid taxes in an amount up to the entire purchase price. So, if you pay $100,000 for the assets of a company, you could be liable for unpaid taxes of up to $100,000 to each of those three government entities. Your $100,000 purchase price just became $400,000!

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Small businesses dominate the U.S. economy. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), 99% of all independent companies in the U.S. have less than 500 employees. As a small business attorney in San Jose, most of the time I am working with clients to form new businesses. However, as we all know, not all businesses succeed. Recently I was counseling a client with regard to the sale of her retail store. She had worked hard building the store into a business that could support her needs, but it was time to retire. Rather than going through the hassle of selling the business as a whole, she decided to simply sell the inventory to a competitor and shut the doors. However, shutting down a company can still be a hassle, and if you forget to do one thing it could result in a big liability later.

So, what does it take to shut down a small company? Here is just a short to-do list of the basic items common to most small businesses. This list does not take into account the added complexities of a business with multiple owners.

1. Talk to your accountant, attorney, financial advisor and any other professionals that may be able to assist you in a smooth closure of your business.

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In this digital age, the courts increasingly have zero tolerance for errors on a UCC-1 financing statement intended to perfect a lender’s security interest in collateral as part of a loan transaction. Most recently, a federal court in Rushton v. Standard Industries, Inc., et al. (In re C.W. Mining Company), 488 B.R. 715 (D. Utah, 2013) ruled that a UCC financing statement that omitted two periods from the debtor’s name was materially misleading, and the “secured party” was therefore not perfected. A lender who thought it was properly secured on a $3 million obligation suddenly found itself entirely unsecured because of this seemingly trivial mistake!

The debtor in this matter was C.W. Mining Company, whose fortunes had slipped, leading to a bankruptcy. Well before the bankruptcy petition was filed a creditor with a security interest in coal owned by the debtor (C.W. Mining Company was a coal producer) filed a UCC-1 financing statement naming the debtor as “CW Mining Company.” The bankruptcy trustee (usually the bad guy in these situations, from the secured creditor’s point of view) brought an action to, among other things, avoid the lien because of this mistake, arguing that the creditor was not properly perfected.

The Bankruptcy Court and the Federal District Court, on appeal, agreed with the trustee. They held that the manner in which the creditor set forth the debtor’s name on the UCC-1 financing statement was seriously misleading, as it omitted the two periods. Of major importance was the fact that the search algorithm used by the state – Utah in this instance – did not pick up the filing in its data base when the debtor’s proper name was entered.

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In Silicon Valley, home to many large technology corporations and thousands of innovative startups, businesses need to move quickly to stay ahead of the competition. As a small business attorney in San Jose, I have formed countless of limited liability companies (LLCs), partnerships and corporations with the Delaware and California Secretaries of State over the years. And one of the first questions my eager small business clients ask me in our initial meetings is almost always, “How long will it take to form my company?”

For many years my answer was that we could have the filed Articles of Incorporation (for a Corporation), Articles of Organization (for an LLC), or Certificate of Partnership within about a week. When the California Secretary of State slowed down a few years ago, I had to tell clients that it could take as much as several weeks. However, in the last year or so the delays crept up to three months or more for the California Secretary of State to process and return a business filing.

Of course, California does provide a 24-hour expedited filing option, for an additional $350 over the usual filing fees. In my more cynical moments I have had to wonder whether it was the California budget crisis that was causing filing times to slow down because of lack of resources, or if the Secretary of State was purposefully taking longer to return routine filings in order to force virtually everyone to pay the “rush” fees.

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Head’s up!! UCC financing statements are changing as of July 1, 2013. Lenders and borrowers need to take extra care to ensure that they have correctly prepared UCC financing statements and, of course, consult with an attorney as necessary. UCC filings are of critical importance in any secured loan transaction, whether it involves asset based loans, technology lending, construction financing, equipment financing, and even real estate lending where fixture filings may be an integral part of the transaction or personal property may be included in the collateral pool. Accordingly, changes in UCC forms affect every lender, secured party and borrower. In a problem loan, loan workout or bankruptcy situation, the validity of the lender’s security interest becomes of paramount importance.

For lenders, the basic rule for perfecting a lien or security interest in most types of assets is to file a UCC-1 Financing Statement with the Secretary of State where the debtor or borrower is registered. If the borrowing company happens to be in San Jose or Palo Alto, California, for example, and is registered as a California corporation, the UCC-1 is filed with the Secretary of State in California. As of July 1, a revised form of UCC-1 is to be used in most states, including California and Delaware.

The changes to the form are driven by privacy concerns and primarily involve eliminating entries for a company’s registration number and an individual’s social security number. Such identifying information has not been required – in fact, social security numbers have automatically been redacted or made unreadable – for a while now in California. One thing the change highlights, however, is the ever-increasing importance of getting the debtor’s name correct on the UCC form, character by character, as other references to a borrower or debtor no longer appear.

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As a business and M&A lawyer in San Jose, it is not uncommon for me to burn the midnight oil hammering out a deal for a Silicon Valley client. There is often a need to break from the perpetually connected life to recharge the lithium cells, so to speak. On a recent bike ride in Santa Clara on the local single track, it occurred to me that the life of a deal can be contained in a single mountain bike ride.

A ride starts with the first drop of a pedal. Any deal starts with the first realization that two people or groups can get together and construct a process that will create value for both of them. Whether it is a simple software license, or a complex strategic alliance and funding deal, it is that first pedal that moves everything forward.

Whether you are involved in a transaction deal or a single track mountain bike ride, you need the right tools to make it all work. For a lawyer, it is the years of learning that just begin after you leave law school. The late nights wrestling with creating a structure that will reduce risks and the time spent attending or teaching professional seminars all contribute to the base of knowledge that comes to bear in every transaction. Making sure your tires fit the trail and your derailleur is adjusted and chain oiled can make the difference between a ride and an ordeal.

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As a veteran M & A lawyer in San Jose, where deal making has never gone out of style, I have been though my share of mergers and acquisitions. For business counsel, the closing of a deal is one of the times I get to spike the ball in the end zone as I watch the cash flow to a happy (and relieved) seller. Needing only to put together a closing package, my work is done and I am off to popping the corks at the closing dinner. Or is it?

From sole proprietors and small businesses to large corporations, many business owners enter the sale process believing the closing of a deal is accompanied by a one-way ticket to paradise. They often find out, however, that the fun is just beginning. The first year after closing presents a number of challenges, all of which must be carefully managed to make sure the seller gets the full value of the business.

As I have discussed in prior blogs there are a number of adjustments, associated with audits and working capital, which occur within the first three to six months after closing, including the following:

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Some tax law changes recently went into effect that that will have an impact on both individuals and businesses in San Jose and throughout the State:

Yet Another Gas Tax Increase

On February 28th the Board of Equalization approved a 3.5 cent gas tax increase, effective July 1, 2013. This brings the gas tax rate to 39.5 cents for 2013-2014. This adjustment should produce revenue at the same rate as if Proposition 30 applied to gas sales. (Proposition 30 resulted in a 0.25% state sales tax increase which does not apply to gas sales.)

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Having represented both buyers and sellers in mergers and acquisition transactions in Silicon Valley for more years than I care to admit, I have been through a number of closings. Some M&A closings that I have been involved in were smooth affairs, accomplished through an exchange of a single phone call with a confirming email, while others have stretched into all night marathons. Although it is often difficult to know whether your deal will allow you to finish at a reasonable time, there are a number of actions you can take to make sure your closing is as smooth and stress free as possible.

Obtain Third Party Consents:

The most important task for both the seller and acquirer is to plan ahead. Everything you will need, to accomplish the closing, will take longer than you think. One item which often delays a closing is getting the necessary consents to the transaction required from third parties. Certain third parties, often parties to major relationships that the acquired company, post-closing, requires for its operations, have rights under their contracts to consent to any change in control. Many of these contracts create significant value for the acquired company and their continued existence are often a key incentive for the buyer proceeding with the deal. It is best to identify these material agreements early on and plan a strategy for securing the necessary consents. Other areas where third party consents might be required are when a party, often a strategic investor, has a right of first refusal that is triggered by the transaction.

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A few years ago, I met with a new client here in San Jose about forming a corporation for his real estate management business. He wanted to use his name as the name of the corporation, e.g. John Smith, Inc., and he had no problems with using his name as the Agent for Service of Process, and having his home address as the business address on public record. Imagine my surprise when I went to the Secretary of State’s database to confirm that the name was available and found that the exact name was taken by the same client at the same address. The corporation had been formed back in 1989 and had been suspended for decades.

I discussed it with the client and discovered that he had spoken with another lawyer about forming a corporation many years ago, and although he thought it was just an informational meeting, the attorney actually formed the corporation and the client didn’t even know about it. If my client wanted to use the name of the suspended corporation, he would first have to revive it, in which case, he would have had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in back franchise taxes and interest. I counseled the client to walk away from the suspended corporation and simply start a new one under a different name. In this case, that was okay because he took no assets from the corporation and therefore could not be held personally liable for the corporation’s taxes. However, shareholders should not walk away from a corporation without carefully considering whether the same conclusion would apply to their situation, and whether they are willing to endure the annoying tax notices to the corporation in the meanwhile.

The landmark case in this area is the Appeal of Howard Zubkoff and Michael Potash, Assumers and/or Transferees of Ralite Lamp Corporation (April 30, 1990, 90-SBE-004). In that case, the Board of Equalization stated that the only way shareholders are liable for the corporation’s franchise taxes would be if the Franchise Tax Board proves that all of the following conditions were met:

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