"The tradeoff for assenting to a period of future ambiguity, of course, is the promise of a large breakup fee if the deal were not to go through. "<p>Really? I would have thought the tradeoff was promise of the large <i>purchase price</i>.
That fee seems a little excessive. I can see wanted an amount high enough to offset any disruption cause by the merge and then breakup, but that number is quite a bit higher than the disruption that would be caused, I'd think.