Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 16 of 16

Full-Text Articles in Law

A Capital Market, Corporate Law Approach To Creditor Conduct, Mark J. Roe, Frederico Cenzi Venezze Oct 2013

A Capital Market, Corporate Law Approach To Creditor Conduct, Mark J. Roe, Frederico Cenzi Venezze

Michigan Law Review

The problem of creditor conduct in a distressed firm—-for which policymakers ought to have the distressed firm’s economically sensible repositioning as a central goal—-has vexed courts for decades. Because courts have not come to coherent, stable doctrine to regulate creditor behavior and because they do not focus on building doctrinal structures that would facilitate the sensible repositioning of the distressed firm, social costs arise and those costs may be substantial. One can easily see why developing a good rule here has been hard to achieve: A rule that facilitates creditor intervention in the debtor’s operations beyond the creditor’s ordinary collection …


Front Matter Sep 2013

Front Matter

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

No abstract provided.


Front Matter May 2013

Front Matter

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

No abstract provided.


Market Power In Power Markets: The Filed-Rate Doctrine And Competition In Electricity, Sandeep Vaheesan Apr 2013

Market Power In Power Markets: The Filed-Rate Doctrine And Competition In Electricity, Sandeep Vaheesan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

State and federal initiatives have opened the American electric power industry to competition over the past four decades. Although the process has not occurred uniformly across the country, wholesale electricity markets exist everywhere today. Independent power producers can construct generation facilities and sell their output to utilities and industrial customers through bilateral contracts. In many regions, centralized power markets now facilitate the sale of billions of dollars in electricity annually through auctions. Although market forces have replaced direct price regulation in electricity, antitrust enforcement has not expanded its role commensurately. A lack of competition has been a serious problem in …


Legal Entities As Transferable Bundles Of Contracts, Kenneth Ayotte, Henry Hansmann Mar 2013

Legal Entities As Transferable Bundles Of Contracts, Kenneth Ayotte, Henry Hansmann

Michigan Law Review

The large, modern business corporation is frequently organized as a complex cluster of hundreds of corporate subsidiaries under the common control of a single corporate parent. Our Article provides new theory and supportive evidence to help explain this structure. We focus, in particular on the advantages of subsidiary entities in providing the option to transfer some or all of the firm's contractual rights and obligations in the future. The theory not only sheds light on corporate subsidiaries but also illuminates a basic function of all types of legal entities, from partnerships to nonprofit corporations. We show that when, as is …


Stop Being Evil: A Proposal For Unbiased Google Search, Joshua G. Hazan Mar 2013

Stop Being Evil: A Proposal For Unbiased Google Search, Joshua G. Hazan

Michigan Law Review

Since its inception in the late 1990s, Google has done as much as anyone to create an "open internet." Thanks to Google's unparalleled search algorithms, anyone's ideas can be heard, and all kinds of information are easier than ever to find. As Google has extended its ambition beyond its core function, however it has conducted itself in a manner that now threatens the openness and diversity of the same internet ecosystem that it once championed. By promoting its own content and vertical search services above all others, Google places a significant obstacle in the path of its competitors. This handicap …


Securities Class Actions And Bankrupt Companies, James J. Park Feb 2013

Securities Class Actions And Bankrupt Companies, James J. Park

Michigan Law Review

Securities class actions are often criticized as wasteful strike suits that target temporary fluctuations in the stock prices of otherwise healthy companies. The securities class actions brought by investors of Enron and WorldCom, companies that fell into bankruptcy in the wake of fraud, resulted in the recovery of billions of dollars in permanent shareholder losses and provide a powerful counterexample to this critique. An issuer's bankruptcy may affect how judges and parties perceive securities class actions and their merits, yet little is known about the subset of cases where the company is bankrupt. This is the first extensive empirical study …


Regulation Of Private Equity In Brazil: Policy Questions Presented And Critique, Shannon Guy Jan 2013

Regulation Of Private Equity In Brazil: Policy Questions Presented And Critique, Shannon Guy

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

In this note, I explore some of the policy questions affecting Brazil’s private equity industry that the country must tackle. In Part II, Section A, I begin by asking the threshold question of whether the Brazilian government should play an active role in encouraging the growth of the private equity industry. I resolve that Brazil should play an active role in encouraging the industry’s growth to encourage several possible benefits to the real economy. Private equity may benefit the economy by providing job growth and job preservation, improved access to credit for firms that would not otherwise have funds, and …


Private Equity & Private Suits: Using 10b-5 Antifraud Suits To Discipline A Transforming Industry, Kenneth J. Black Jan 2013

Private Equity & Private Suits: Using 10b-5 Antifraud Suits To Discipline A Transforming Industry, Kenneth J. Black

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This note demonstrates why private equity will no longer be able to avoid private investor suits as it has (mostly) done in the past and explores the industry’s response to a growing number of investor suits. Notably, the industry has already begun to shift its strategy from regulatory avoidance to regulatory capture, at least in part to avoid investor suits. Given these changes, this note proposes that the best way to maintain discipline in the transforming private equity market is to protect the ability of investors to bring private suits.


Should Angel-Backed Start-Ups Reject Venture Capital?, Darian M. Ibrahim Jan 2013

Should Angel-Backed Start-Ups Reject Venture Capital?, Darian M. Ibrahim

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

The conventional wisdom is that entrepreneurs seek financing for their high-growth, high-risk start-up companies in a particular order. They begin with friends, family, and “bootstrapping” (e.g., credit card debt). Next they turn to angel investors, or accredited investors (and usually ex-entrepreneurs) who invest their own money in multiple, early-stage start-ups. Finally, after angel funds run dry, entrepreneurs seek funding from venture capitalists (VCs), whose deep pockets and connections lead the startup to an initial public offering (IPO) or sale to a larger company in the same industry (trade sale). That conventional wisdom may have been the model for start-up success …


Incubator Cities: Tomorrow's Economy, Yesterday's Start-Ups, Abraham J.B. Cable Jan 2013

Incubator Cities: Tomorrow's Economy, Yesterday's Start-Ups, Abraham J.B. Cable

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Venture development funds (“VDFs”) are products of state and local government law that use public funds to invest in local start-ups, in the hope that these companies will then attract venture capital investment. Existing analysis by legal scholars largely assumes that establishing a private venture capital market is essential to encouraging entrepreneurship. This article challenges that assumption. It argues that VDFs and other policies focused on encouraging venture capital are outmoded and inconsistent with the ultimate economic development goals of state and local governments. In many industries, entrepreneurs can now get by with less capital because the cost of developing …


Recent Changes In U.S. And U.K. Overseas Anti-Corruption Enforcement Under The Fcpa And The U.K. Bribery Law: Private Equity Compliance, Isaac A. Binkovitz Jan 2013

Recent Changes In U.S. And U.K. Overseas Anti-Corruption Enforcement Under The Fcpa And The U.K. Bribery Law: Private Equity Compliance, Isaac A. Binkovitz

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

The following discussion provides a preliminary guide for those tasked with steering private equity firms through the shifting obstacle course of overseas anti-corruption compliance. Section I briefly reviews the centrality of overseas anti-corruption enforcement and its role in creating a more hospitable business climate in emerging markets. Section I also examines the American and British enforcement regimes in general before analyzing the most recent changes–specifically, changes as to the scope of liability and expansion of their jurisdiction. This section is designed to help determine whether investments or acquisitions fall within the purview of either enforcement regime. Section II discusses various …


Favoritism And Corporate Law: The Confused Corporate Opportunity Doctrine In The Hyundai Motor Case, Hwa-Jin Kim, Seung Hwan Lee, Stephen M. Woodcock Jan 2013

Favoritism And Corporate Law: The Confused Corporate Opportunity Doctrine In The Hyundai Motor Case, Hwa-Jin Kim, Seung Hwan Lee, Stephen M. Woodcock

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Core legal principles of U.S. corporate law are often met with perplexity in foreign jurisdictions. This is especially true for legal principles that are controversial even in the U.S. This Article takes the corporate opportunity doctrine and examines how it has been exported to the civil law regime in Korea. Korean conglomerates such as Samsung Group and Hyundai Motor Group have become major players in the global market, but corporate law and practice in Korea have had a difficult time keeping up with developments in the business sector. The Hyundai Motor Case demonstrates an ambitious, but ill-fated, attempt at the …


Joinder Under The Aia: Shifting Non-Practicing Entity Patent Assertions Away From Small Businesses, Xun Liu Jan 2013

Joinder Under The Aia: Shifting Non-Practicing Entity Patent Assertions Away From Small Businesses, Xun Liu

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

When the America Invents Act ("AIA ") was signed in September 2011, many feared the law might benefit larger corporations at the expense of small businesses. This Note examines how one portion of the AIA, governing joinder in patent cases, might actually benefit small businesses by reducing patent assertions from non-practicing entities ("NPEs"). NPE assertions disproportionately affect small businesses, both because NPEs target small businesses more frequently and because patent assertions have a greater impact on individual companies. Prior to the AIA, joining multiple defendants in a single lawsuit offered important advantages for patent holders and allowed NPEs to achieve …


Franchise Goodwill: Take A Sad Song And Make It Better, Robert W. Emerson Jan 2013

Franchise Goodwill: Take A Sad Song And Make It Better, Robert W. Emerson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The end of a franchisor-franchisee relationship is often like a divorce, with the parties engaged in a heated battle over the ownership of the franchise goodwill. In this debate, the same franchisors or franchisees often change their positions on goodwill ownership depending on current needs. This Article analyzes cases in many areas of franchise law to determine why franchisors and franchisees engage in such inconsistent reasoning, what the consequences are for franchising, and if there are ways to produce a more logical and efficient form of analysis and debate. In addressing the most contentious issues of franchising, adherence by litigants …


A Complete View Of The Cathedral: Claims Of Tortious Interference And The Specific Performance Remedy In Mergers And Acquisitions Litigation, Luke Nikas, Paul B. Maslo Jan 2013

A Complete View Of The Cathedral: Claims Of Tortious Interference And The Specific Performance Remedy In Mergers And Acquisitions Litigation, Luke Nikas, Paul B. Maslo

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

A bank promises to lend several billion dollars to fund a buyer’s purchase of a target company. The buyer enters into a merger agreement with the target. Thereafter, the economy plummets, and the bank decides that breaching its contract with the buyer will cost less than performing. The buyer seeks specific performance. The target also sues the bank, alleging tortious interference with the merger agreement. Billions of dollars are on the line. This is the reality lived by many investment banks that committed to fund leveraged buyouts during the recent economic downturn. Most of these matters were resolved in private …