Generally I think with the acquisition of public companies, its open to the public so subject to arguably more scrutiny as people have more access to data ect. With the acquisition of private M&A deals, upper management is usually the one in control with such information. Also with public M&A deals, it is likely more difficult to find a specific shareholder at fault since there will be many shareholders. With private M&A deals, it’s probably easier to identify. So this will be more prevalent during the post-closing stage, let’s say if the seller promised something for the buyer but failed to do so. In public M&A deals, I imagine it would be very difficult to ask for compensation due to the multitude of shareholders as opposed to a private M&A where you could (in principle) hold the seller directly responsible.
