Alliance Data Systems, Blackstone Group, and “Reasonable Best Efforts”

Posted on January 28, 2008 by Ken Adams

If anyone is wondering why I’ve been devoting time to efforts standards, have a look at this post on DealBook by Steven Davidoff regarding a development in Blackstone Group’s proposed acquisition of Alliance Data Systems.

For reasons I discuss in MSCD, in this article, and in last week’s blog post, it would be bizarre for a court to hold that reasonable best efforts conveys a meaning different from best efforts.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

  • Ken Adams

    Alliance Data Systems has now sued Blackstone Group; see this item on DealBook.

  • RossK

    Surely a lawyer who writes “reasonable best efforts” has slipped up unless they were asked to be ambiguous. Even if you are correct that there is no difference between the various permutations it is still clear that writing “reasonable best efforts” is not using one of the standard phrases.