“Change in Control” or “Change of Control”?

Here’s another issues that cropped up during my Geneva seminars: Which is preferable, change in control or change of control?

My instinct was that both usages are equally acceptable, and that was borne out by five minutes of research. Contracts filed on the SEC’s EDGAR system don’t seem to display a marked preferance for one usage over the other. And change in control yielded 406,000 Google hits, change of control 439,000.

So it’s a draw—use whichever takes your fancy. But you might want to pick one and stick with it.