William T. Allen
July 17, 1944
October 13, 2019 (aged 75)
Honorary L.L.D., 1972 Dickinson Law School
J.D., 1972 University of Texas[1]
1969 B.S.New York University[1]
Chancellor of Delaware
Founder & Director, NYU Pollack Center for Law & Business
Professor New York University Stern School of Business faculty
New York University School of Law faculty[1]
Corporate law
Corporate governance
Career[edit]
Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery[edit]
Allen was the Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery from 1985 to 1997.[1] In the Lacos Land Co v Arden Group, Inc case, Allen found that "As a director and officer Briskin has a duty to act with complete loyalty to the interests of the corporation and its shareholders. His position in demanding the amendments under threat of thwarting corporate transactions is inconsistent with that obligation. The stockholder vote was fatally flawed by the threats. Shareholders were inappropriately placed in a position in which they were told that if they refused to vote affirmatively Briskin would not support future transactions that might be beneficial to the corporation. A vote of the shareholders under such circumstances cannot satisfy the mandate of Section 242(b) requiring shareholder consent to charter amendments."[3]
As Chancellor Allen observed that: "The judges of that court spend most of their time adjudicating cases of alleged breaches of fiduciary duty by corporate officer or directors."[4]: 2
Publications[edit]
He coauthored with Han Shen, "Assessing China's Top-down Securities Market” in Morck Randall & Bernard Yeung eds. "Capitalizing China", The University of Chicago Press 2012;[8]
His wrote Commentaries and Cases on the Law of Business Organization,[2][9] which was first published in 2003 and is now in its fifth edition.[2][10]
His January 2008 Davies Fund for Business Law Lecture delivered at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto was centitled "Modern Corporate Governance and the Erosion of the Business Judgment Rule in Delaware Corporate Law".[4]