Letters of Intent, Confidentiality and Standstill Agreements (Free Article)

• Posted by Geoffrey G. Gussis on March 9th, 2005


• Filed in Corporate/M&A, Guides, Tips and Practice Pointers

Our friends at the Practising Law Institute have made another free article available - this time it focuses on letters of intent, confidentiality and standstill agreements.  The author, Marla Hoehn of Pillsbury Winthrop LLP, summarizes these three commonly used documents as follows:

"Letters of intent are preliminary statements used to outline the general terms of a proposed corporate transaction. And letters of intent don’t even have to be binding if the parties don’t want them to be. You could call these latter documents "junk letters of intent."

Confidentiality agreements are contracts that permit one party to provide confidential information to another while protecting itself from the risks of misuse of that information by the other party.

Standstill agreements are covenants by one party not to enter into negotiations with any other parties regarding the proposed transaction, during a specified time, while the parties continue negotiations toward a definitive agreement."

If you haven’t bought any books from PLI or attended one of their seminars you are missing out.  We’ve found PLI to be a great resource for practical, timely guidance on a variety of legal issues.