A paper by Stanford Law Professor Joseph Grundfest and researcher Gal Dor on the attorneys’ fees the Delaware Chancery Court approved has sparked a cross-country spat .

Over the weekend, venture investor Bill Gurley let his 700k followers know about the recently released paper by Grundfest, who is co-director of Stanford’s Rock Center on Corporate Governance. Gurley was shocked by the data, which allegedly showed that Delaware judges—two in particular—approved fee packages at seven to 10 multipliers of their hourly rates, compared to the federal courts’ lower multiples. His advice was stay away from the First State. Andrew Sorkin’s DealBook picked right up on it and titled Monday’s newsletter, “Activist Judges.” Ouch.

"This has been an area where arguably there's been more heat than light," Grundfest told Law360. "People have been arguing about fees, but they haven't had much data where you collect, in a systematic manner, whatever it is we know about Delaware and federal fees." Then the retorts started, not surprisingly, from the plaintiff’s bar.

On LinkedIn, Joel Fleming from Equity Litigation said the data was "so flawed as to be useless." "I think it's clear to folks who have been following this space," Fleming told Law360. "This is an advocacy piece from the same sort of pro-founder, Silicon Valley folk who have been attacking the Delaware courts."

Feemultiplier-gate got picked up by other leading business publications such as Fortune with an image of Elon Musk. As readers know, Musk’s $56 billion pay package was thrown out by a Delaware Court, which then awarded the plaintiff’s lawyers $345 million for the case.  

Speaking of governance, we’ll be at the Financial Times ODX Conference next week where our partner Lauren Odell will be on a panel on shareholder activism along with Evercore’s Bill Anderson and Kirkland & Ellis’ Shaun Mathew.

Have great weekend,

GPP Team

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FROM OUR DESK TO YOURS

GPP welcomed our interns on Monday and we all decided at our Huddle to pick one great thing to do in New York this summer. Here’s our list:

• Take the Staten Island Ferry and come back soon!
• Eat at every cool restaurant in the East Village and rank choice vote
• Check out some soccer at NYCFC or the games of the FIFA Club World Cup
• Eat all of the food at one of the city’s night markets (our personal favorite is Queens)
• Bet on actual turtle races and win a free drink
• Catch some culture at the newly reopened Frick Collection
• Listen to some tunes at the Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City and the Summer Stage in Central Park
• Stop and smell the roses at the New York Botanical Garden featuring Van Gogh’s flowers

If that’s not enough for you – the New York Times just put out its list of the 100 best restaurants in NYC so you might try to cross a few of those off your list! 

PEOPLE MOVES

• Uber named Andrew Macdonald as chief operating officer after announcing that one of its longest- tenured executives, Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Cot, would be stepping down. Read More
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• Jefferies added Lazard’s Rich Thomas to lead its activism defense globally. Read More
• Nike named former McDonald’s executive Michael Gonda as the sneaker giant’s vice president and chief communications officer. Read More

•  June 11-12: Financial Times Outstanding Directors Exchange, New York
• June 19-20: Second Annual Rome Conference on AI, Ethics and Corporate Governance, Rome
• July 9-12: Society for Corporate Governance 2025 National Conference, Colorado Springs

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