What Liberia and Panama are to the oil tanker, Delaware is to the U.S. corporation: a friendly, light-taxing home port. Some 180,000 corporations are based there, at least on paper, including 45% of those listed on the New York Stock Exchange and 56% of the FORTUNE 500. So when Governor Michael Castle signed new antitakeover legislation last week, the impact reached far beyond Delaware's borders. Among its provisions, the law requires that takeover artists who buy between 15% and 85% of a Delaware-registered company wait three years before selling off assets or merging the target firm with another one. The effect...
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