Law360, New York ( May 29, 2014, 7:56 PM EDT) -- Prior to Aug. 1, 2013, deal lawyers generally had two ways to structure a public company acquisition of a Delaware corporation — a statutory merger, whereby a vote of the target stockholders was required to approve the transaction (i.e., a long-form merger), or a two-step tender offer, whereby the buyer would undertake a first-step public tender offer, followed by a second-step merger (in either the form of a long-form merger or a short-form merger ) to eliminate any residual outstanding interest, resulting in the buyer owning 100 percent of the target's outstanding shares. Absent regulatory concerns, a two-step tender offer generally was considered a faster route to completing an acquisition....