Reverse Mergers: Speed, and the Shell You Inherit

A reverse merger is the fastest way to become a public company. The reason it is fast is that someone else already did the work. That is also the reason it is risky.The structure is simple. A private operating company merges into a public shell. The shell's shareholders end up with a minority position, the private company's owners end up with control, and the combined entity is a reporting company from day one. No S-1. No underwriter. No waiting for effectiveness.Then you file what practitioners call a Super 8-K, generally within four business days, containing essentially all the information a Form 10 would have required. Audited financials of the operating company. Full business description. Risk factors. Management. Related-party transactions. The disclosure obligation does not disappear. It moves.Here is what I tell every client considering this.You are not buying a corporate structure. You are buying a history. Every liability that shell ever incurred — every lawsuit, every unpaid tax, every undisclosed agreement, every stock issuance that may not have had a valid exemption — you are acquiring all of it. Shell diligence is the entire transaction. If the diligence is thin, the deal is a liability transfer with a ticker attached.Second, former shell status follows the company. Rule 144 is generally unavailable for securities of a company that was ever a shell, unless the company has ceased to be a shell, is current in its reporting, has filed the information a Form 10 would require, and twelve months have passed since that filing. In practical terms, your shareholders' stock is locked up longer than they expect, and they will be unhappy about it.Third, the shareholder base. Shells often carry a scattered group of holders left over from prior promotions. You have no relationship with those people and no control over what they do with their shares once a market appears.Fourth, the staff knows the pattern. Reverse mergers into dormant shells have been the vehicle for a great many pump-and-dump schemes. That does not make your transaction improper. It does mean your filing will be read closely.A reverse merger into a clean, well-documented, reporting shell, with real diligence and honest disclosure, is a legitimate and sensible transaction. I have handled them. The failures I have seen almost always trace back to diligence that got skipped because the seller was in a hurry.Be the party that is not in a hurry.This is Inside Securities Law. I'm Frederick M. Lehrer. General information, not legal advice.