Voluntary Events

Tenders

A tender offer is a bid to purchase some or all of the shareholders' stock in a company. Tender offers are typically a public bid for stockholders to sell some or all their stock at a specific price within a particular time window.

Tender offers may carry certain conditions. Some conditions are limited to specific groups of shareholders, and some conditions may benefit any shareholder. 

Rights Issues

A rights issue is an offer to existing shareholders to purchase newly-issued stock, the right to which they can usually exercise or sell on the open market.

SPAC

A SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) is a company without business activities that is formed strictly to raise capital through an initial public offering (IPO) with the intention to purchase all or part of a non-listed company in the relatively near term. As it is not clear which company SPACs are going to acquire in advance and do not have any business activities at the time of the IPO, they are also referred to as ‘shell companies’ or ‘blank cheque companies'.

Warrants

A warrant is a derivative issued by a company that gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy the company’s stock at a certain price before an expiration date.

Mandatory Events

Merger/Acquisition

A merger / acquisition involves the process of combining two companies into one. As a shareholder of a company which is set to be acquired, you are generally presented with a tender offer in which you can tender your shares to the acquiring company at a premium.

Spin Off

A spin-off occurs when a larger company wishes to create a new independent entity by either selling or distributing new shares of the new entity. As part of the spin-off, the parent company’s existing shareholders are given shares in the new independent company.

Split

Forward split: A corporate action in which a company issues additional shares to its shareholders, increasing the total by the specified ratio based on shares previously held.

Reverse Split: A corporate action which consolidates the number of existing shares into fewer, more expensive shares. Also dependent on the specified ratio.