Business Commons^™

Outsourcing Voting To Ai: Can Chatgpt Advise Index Funds On Proxy Voting Decisions?, Chen Wang

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Released in November 2022, Chat Generative Pre-training Transformer (“ChatGPT”), has risen rapidly to prominence, and its versatile capabilities have already been shown in a variety of fields. Due to ChatGPT’s advanced features, such as extensive pre-training on diverse data, strong generalization ability, fine-tuning capabilities, and improved reasoning, the use of AI in the legal industry could experience a significant transformation. Since small passive funds with low-cost business models generally lack the financial resources to make informed proxy voting decisions that align with their shareholders’ interests, this Article considers the use of ChatGPT to assist small investment funds, particularly small passive …

The Public’S Companies, Andrew K. Jennings

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

This Essay uses a series of survey studies to consider how public understandings of public and private companies map into urgent debates over the role of the corporation in American society. Does a social-media company, for example, owe it to its users to follow the free-speech principles embodied in the First Amendment? May corporate managers pursue environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) policies that could reduce short-term or long-term profits? How should companies respond to political pushback against their approaches to free expression or ESG?

The studies’ results are consistent with understandings that both public and private companies have greater public …

Comment Letter On Sec’S Proposed Rule On Conflicts Of Interest Associated With The Use Of Predictive Data Analytics By Broker-Dealers And Investment Advisers, File Number S7-12-23, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Christina M. Sautter

Faculty Works

This comment letter responds to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule Release Nos. 34-97990; IA-6353; File Number S7-12-23 - Conflicts of Interest Associated with the Use of Predictive Data Analytics by Broker-Dealers and Investment Advisers. Our comments draw on our scholarship relating to laypersons’ participation in securities markets and the corporate sector as well as on the role of technology in corporate governance.

We express concerns that the SEC’s proposed regulation undermines individuals’ ability to access capital markets in an efficient and cost-effective manner. In the era of excessive concentration of equities ownership and power, often with negative societal …

What’S Scope 3 Good For?, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

Opposition to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) new rule on updated climate risk reporting has focused on one category of disclosures as particularly objectionable: Scope 3 emissions.⁷ Otherwise known as “supply chain emissions,” Scope 3 emissions have been voluntarily reported by a growing number of companies since the term was invented as part of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol in 2001.⁸ They include all the emissions both up and downstream of a corporations’ own activities: the emissions of the privately-owned factory that produced the shoes Target sells, as well as the emissions you burn while driving to the …