주식매수청구권의 남용 방지에 관한 연구 - 델라웨어주 일반회사법의 비교법적 고찰 -

Recently the number of appraisal remedy cases has increased than before. The problem is that appraisal rights are used to realize the profit in many cases. Even in the United States of Delaware, the number of appraisal remedy cases has increased significantly for the past ten years. In this paper, the measures to prevent the abuse of appraisal rights in comparison with the Delaware General Corporation Law are described. The biggest difference between Korean Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act and the Delaware General Corporation Law is that the latter admits market-out exceptions. It is also important to prevent the abuse of appraisal rights, but prior to that, it is important to determine the viewpoint to look at the function of the appraisal rights. The function of appraisal rights is to adjust interests between the company and the shareholders. If so, it is unreasonable to deny appraisal rights of shareholders of listed companies by reason of sufficient market liquidity. There is a mismatch between the market value and the fair value accepted by the court, and to protect the majority shareholders is not the function of appraisal rights. Therefore it is not reasonable to introduce a market-out exceptions in order to prevent the abuse of appraisal rights. There is an unreasonable part in operation of the Korean appraisal rights system. Currently, in Korea, the requirements for appraisal rights of listed companies and non-listed companies are different. In the case of a listed company, a shareholder who has acquired shares until the public announcement of merger may exercise appraisal rights. However, this is an unfair discrimination between shareholders of a listed company and those of a non-listed company. It is appropriate to amend the law so that the shareholders of listed companies can also exercise their appraisal rights if they acquire shares until the closing date of the shareholder registry. Next, in the case of Dell, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that transaction price can be used as an indicator of fair value if the structure of MBO does not indicate any procedural problems. There is a problem as the Chancery Court exercised wide discretion in the ruling of Dell and Aruba. In determining fair value, Korean Courts shall also take into account all relevant factors as courts of Delaware does. Therefore determining fair value is entirely at the court’s discretion. Fair value should be calculated according to the general financial principle. So it is not reasonable that court exercises wide discretion in determining fair value. In the future, it seems reasonable for the court to focus on whether determining fair value procedure has secured fairness, rather than valuation methods in appraisal proceedings. It is possible to consider the commercial adjustable interest rate, advance payment system as measures to reduce interest for arrears which accrues by the determining fair value, advance payment system. Enforcement of the commercial adjustable interest rate will be a clear way to prevent the abuse of appraisal rights, but it will be hard to enforce it in reality because commercial statutory interest rate has never been revised since the enactment of the Commercial Code. If it is difficult to enforce the revised interest rate, it is possible to consider adjustable interest rate of interest for arrears. If it is also difficult to enforce, advance payment system is worth considering.