Bancroft Convertible Fund, Inc. v. Zico Investment Holdings Inc.

825 F.2d 731, 1987 U.S. App. LEXIS 10016
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedJuly 29, 1987
DocketNo. 87-5260
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 825 F.2d 731 (Bancroft Convertible Fund, Inc. v. Zico Investment Holdings Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bancroft Convertible Fund, Inc. v. Zico Investment Holdings Inc., 825 F.2d 731, 1987 U.S. App. LEXIS 10016 (3d Cir. 1987).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

GIBBONS, Chief Judge:

Zico Investment Holdings Inc. (Zico) appeals from orders of the district court which granted a preliminary injunction against its tender offer for shares of Bancroft Convertible Fund, Inc. (Bancroft) and which denied its motion to vacate that injunction. Bancroft is a closed-end investment company. The district court granted the preliminary injunction after concluding that Bancroft was likely to succeed in establishing that completion of the tender offer by Zico would result in a violation of section 12(d)(1)(A) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, 15 U.S.C. § 80a-12(d)(1)(A) (1982) (the Act). Section 12(d)(1)(A) prohibits an investment company from acquiring more than three (3) percent of the outstanding voting stock of another investment company. Zico contends that the preliminary injunction should be reversed because (1) there is no private cause of action for enforcement of the prohibition in section 12(d)(1)(A) of the Act; (2) the court erred in concluding Bancroft is likely to succeed in proving that Zico is an investment company; and (3) Bancroft made an inadequate showing of irreparable harm. We affirm.

I.

Implied Private Cause of Action

Relying on Judge Hastie’s opinion in Taussig v. Wellington Fund, Inc., 313 F.2d 472, 476 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 374 U.S. 806, 83 S.Ct. 1695, 10 L.Ed.2d 1031 (1963), the district court concluded that Bancroft’s complaint states a claim upon which a private party can seek enforcement of the prohibition in section 12(d)(1)(A) of the Act. In Taussig, this court held that a complaint seeking private enforcement of the prohibition against use of deceptive investment company names, section 35(d) of the Act, 15 U.S.C. § 80a-34(d), stated a claim arising under the laws of the United States, and was sufficient to support pendent jurisdiction over a common-law unfair competition claim. Zico maintains that the district court’s reliance on Taussig was misplaced for several reasons.

Zico’s first objection is that, unlike the case at bar which involves private enforcement of section 12(d)(1)(A), Taussig involved private enforcement of section 35(d). Admittedly, there is no reported case in this court or any other which deals specifically with private enforcement of the anti-pyramiding prohibition in section 12(d)(1)(A). Zico makes no persuasive argument, however, which suggests congressional intention to treat the prohibition against investment company pyramiding differently, for purposes of private enforcement, than are the various other prohibitions in the Act which are also intended to protect investors.

Next, Zico argues that, assuming a private cause of action for enforcement of the Investment Company Act may be implied, Bancroft’s management should not have standing to assert it in a tender offer situation. Not only is there no supporting authority to sustain it, but this argument also ignores the realities of tender offer litigation which demonstrate that such a standing rule would be toothless. It is virtually certain that an objecting shareholder would intervene in tender offer litigation. More fundamentally, however, we note that section 10 of the Investment Company Act, 15 U.S.C. § 80a-10 (1982), which governs membership on boards of directors of investment companies, indicates that those directors are uniquely qualified to assert private causes of action in the interest of the security holders to whom they owe fiduciary obligations.

[734]*734Finally, Zico urges that Taussig, and the many other cases in other courts,1 which have recognized the availability of private enforcement of the Investment Company Act have been overruled by the line of Supreme Court cases that followed Cort v. Ash, 422 U.S. 66, 95 S.Ct. 2080, 45 L.Ed.2d 26 (1975). See, e.g., Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U.S. 560, 572, 99 S.Ct. 2479, 2487, 61 L.Ed.2d 82 (1979); Transamerica Mortgage Advisors, Inc. (TAMA) v. Lewis, 444 U.S. 11, 100 S.Ct. 242, 62 L.Ed.2d 146 (1979); Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U.S. 677, 742, 99 S.Ct. 1946, 1981, 60 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). Those cases suggest that, in determining whether a private cause of action may be implied from a federal regulatory statute, the starting point is congressional intention.

In Fogel v. Chestnutt, a characteristically thorough and analytical opinion, Judge Friendly considered and rejected the contention that the post-Cort v. Ash cases overruled the settled law on private causes of action under the Investment Company Act. See Fogel v. Chestnutt, 668 F.2d 100, 105-12 (2d Cir.1981), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 828, 103 S.Ct. 65, 74 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982). Pointing to the numerous decisions in courts of appeals which, from 1961 forward, upheld private causes of action under the Investment Company Act, Judge Friendly concluded that the issue should be resolved in the same manner as was the question of private causes of action under Rule 10b-5. See Fogel, 668 F.2d at 111, (citing Superintendent of Ins. v. Bankers Life & Casualty Co., 404 U.S. 6, 92 S.Ct. 165, 30 L.Ed.2d 128 (1971)).

We need not repeat Judge Friendly’s Fo-gel v. Chestnutt analysis here. We do note, however, that it is consistent with the analysis made a short time later by the Supreme Court in Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. v. Curran, 456 U.S. 353, 102 S.Ct. 1825, 72 L.Ed.2d 182 (1982). In Curran, the Court considered whether there is an implied private right of action for enforcement of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA). After many courts of appeals had so held, Congress amended the CEA in 1974 and 1978, but neither the original act nor the amendments addressed the subject of private judicial remedies. The Curran Court, stating that the crucial issue was whether Congress, in amending the CEA, intended to preserve pre-existing implied remedies, reasoned:

In determining whether a private cause of action is implicit in a federal statutory scheme when the statute by its terms is silent on that issue, the initial focus must be on the state of the law at the time the [amending] legislation was enacted. More precisely, we must examine Congress’ perception of the law that it was shaping or reshaping. When Congress enacts new legislation, the question is whether Congress intended to create a private remedy as a supplement to the express enforcement provisions of the statute.

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Bluebook (online)
825 F.2d 731, 1987 U.S. App. LEXIS 10016, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bancroft-convertible-fund-inc-v-zico-investment-holdings-inc-ca3-1987.