Statutes also allow shareholders to dissent from such transactions, have a court appraise the value of their stake, and force payment at a judicially determined price. Mergers can involve sophisticated transactions designed to simply combine corporations or to create a new corporation or to eliminate minority shareholder interests. In some mergers, an acquiring corporation creates a subsidiary as the form for the merged or acquired entity. A subsidiary is a corporation that is majority owned or wholly owned by another corporation. Creating a subsidiary allows an acquiring corporation to avoid responsibility for an acquired corporation's liabilities, while providing shareholders in the acquired corporation an interest in the acquiring corporation.
Mergers also can involve parent corporations and their subsidiaries.
A similar though distinct transaction is the sale, lease, or exchange of all or practically all of a corporation's property and assets. The purchaser in such a transaction typically continues operating the business, though its scope may be narrowed or broadened. In most states, shareholders have a statutory right of dissent and appraisal in these transactions, unless the sale is part of ordinary business dealings, such as issuing a mortgage or deed of trust covering all of a corporation's assets. Not all business combinations are consensual. Often an aggressor corporation will use takeover techniques to acquire a target corporation.