Mergers and Acquisitions A company may announce a reverse stock split in order to carry out a merger with or acquisition of another company. A company's articles of incorporation limit the number of shares the company can issue; a common practice of company buyouts is to issue new shares of the acquiring (or new) company to the shareholders of the company being acquired or merged out of existence. If the buyout or merger means the company would break that limit, it may carry out a reverse split to reduce the number of shares it has on the market. An example of this was Duke Energy announcing a one-for-three reverse split for its 2012 merger with Progress Energy. The reverse split allowed Duke to keep within its legal limit of 2 billion shares outstanding.
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