Law Commons^™

Team Production Revisited, William W. Bratton

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article reconsiders Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout’s team production model of corporate law, offering a favorable evaluation. The model explains both the legal corporate entity and corporate governance institutions in microeconomic terms as the means to the end of encouraging investment, situating corporations within markets and subject to market constraints but simultaneously insisting that productive success requires that corporations remain independent of markets. The model also integrates the inherited framework of corporate law into an economically derived model of production, constructing a microeconomic description of large enterprises firmly rooted in corporate doctrine but neither focused on nor limited by …

Crowding Out Theory: Protecting Shareholders By Balancing Executives’ Incentives In France, The United States, & China, Palden Flynn

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This paper explores the differences between executive compensation regimes in France, the United States, and China. It asks whether there is a link between state regulation of real options as a form of executive compensation and state regulation of shareholder protections. This paper argues that if a country regulates the use of real options as compensation, then that country is also more likely to have strong shareholder protection laws. This argument seems to be true based on a descriptive review of executive compensation law and shareholder protections in France, the United States, and China.

If it is true that countries …

Agency Theory As Prophecy: How Boards, Analysts, And Fund Managers Perform Their Roles, Jiwook Jung, Frank Dobbin

Seattle University Law Review

In 1976, Michael Jensen and William Meckling published a paper reintroducing agency theory that explained how the modern corporation is structured to serve dispersed shareholders. They purported to describe the world as it exists but, in fact, they described a utopia, and their piece was read as a blueprint for that utopia. We take a page from the sociology of knowledge to argue that, in the modern world, economic theories function as prescriptions for behavior as much as they function as descriptions. Economists and management theorists often act as prophets rather than scientists, describing the world not as it is, …

Tax And Corporate Governance: The Influence Of Tax On Managerial Agency Costs, David M. Schizer

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines the influence of tax on managerial agency costs, with particular emphasis on public companies in the United States. Focusing on “C-corporations,” this chapter first considers why tax is an imperfect vehicle for mitigating managerial agency costs. It then discusses how tax influences the compensation of managers, both in ways policy makers intended, and in ways they did not. The chapter also considers how tax affects management decisions about capital structure, hedging, and acquisitions. In addition, this chapter explores the tax system’s influence on the ability and incentives of shareholders to monitor management. This chapter then concludes with …

Everything Must Stay In Place - President Business, The Lego Movie, Tamara Belinfanti

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

The Regulation Of U.S. Money Market Funds: Lessons From Europe, Latoya C. Brown

Latoya C. Brown, Esq.

The recent financial crisis challenged long held perceptions of money market funds (“MMFs”) as stable and highly liquid instruments. Regulators in the US and in Europe now seek to impose additional rules on MMFs to avoid another significant failure as happened to the Reserve Fund. In the US, the debate is drawing even more media attention as question of which regulatory body - such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department, and the Financial Stability Oversight Council – should lead the way has taken interesting twists and turns. This paper examines primary reform options being proposed in the …

Pathway To Minority Shareholder Protection: Derivative Actions In The People's Republic Of China, Donald C. Clarke, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

Using a dataset of Chinese judicial opinions arising in over fifty cases, this paper analyses the development and current implementation of shareholder derivative actions in the courts of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), both before and after the derivative lawsuit was explicitly authorized in the PRC’s 2006 Company Law effective January 1, 2006. In addition, we describe the very unique ecology of enterprise organization and corporate governance in modern China, and critique the formal design of the derivative action and offer reform suggestions. We find the design of the Chinese derivative lawsuit to be, in some respects, innovative and …

Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill

Seattle University Law Review

Shareholders, and the relationship between shareholders and management, lay at the heart of Professor Berle’s scholarship. The goal of this Article is to compare the image of shareholders emerging from The Modern Corporation and Private Property and the Berle/Dodd debate with a range of contemporary visions of the shareholder that underpin some international regulatory responses to recent financial debacles, from Enron to the current global financial crisis. As the Article dis- cusses, these recent developments in the era of financial crises have prompted a reevaluation of the traditional image of the shareholder—and the role of the shareholder in the modern …

Private Equity Transaction In India, Ved Prakash

VED PRAKASH

Private equity investors has realised that India is an ideal destination for private equity investments. Indian company and investor has benefited due to increased foreign equity participation and valuation of investment in recent past. This article covers some of the terms used in private equity transaction and the rights of the shareholders.

Rationalizing The Taxation Of Reorganizations And Other Corporate Acquisitions, Herwig J. Schlunk

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article examines the taxation of human shareholders in the case of mergers and acquisitions. Currently, the relevant law is extraordinarily complex, utterly inconsistent, and in many instances arguably unfair. There are really only two plausible ways to cure these ills. The first would involve moving to a tax system with more fulsome gain recognition, most likely in the form of mark-to-market taxation. This option is not in my opinion feasible (either technically or what is perhaps more important, politically). Accordingly, the second potential cure, moving to a tax system with less gain recognition, merits attention. In this article, I …

Should Shareholders Have A Greater Say Over Executive Pay??, Randall S. Thomas, Brian R. Cheffins

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Executive pay arrangements in Britain's publicly quoted companies have been subjected to much criticism in recent years. Proposals that shareholders should have a greater direct say over managerial remuneration have been a by-product of the concerns expressed. Debate on this point, however, has been largely speculative. This is because there is little evidence available in the United Kingdom indicating how shareholders would exercise any new powers they might be given. This paper addresses the evidentiary gap by drawing upon the experience in the United States, where empirical work indicates that shareholder voting only operates as a potential check when pay …

Corporate Governance In A Global Environment: The Search For The Best Of All Worlds, Timothy L. Fort, Cindy A. Schipani

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article reflects on the various visions of corporate governance. Initially, the Article reviews the contractarian and communitarian theories of the corporation. The communitarian theory views the corporation as a separate entity, with social responsibilities not only to the shareholders but to the firm's other stakeholders and society at large. On the other hand, the contractarian approach considers the firm's shareholders as the primary constituency to whom management is accountable. Voluntary contracting and market forces align the interests of management and shareholders. The Article next analyzes salient features of corporate governance in the United States, Japan, and Germany. The United …

Harvey's Silence (Symposium: Letters To The Commission), James J. White

Articles

Harvey Miller has a reputation as a leading bankruptcy lawyer, and he deserves it. As his criticism shows, he understands why and how the Code changed the Act in 1978 and how the drafters of Chapter 11 erred. Better than all but a handful of other lawyers, Harvey Miller knows how to manipulate Chapter 11 to serve his clients' interests. He understands both the legal and practical intricacies of Chapter 11. Were I the CEO of a large and troubled company, I would hire Harvey Miller and gladly pay him twice what most other bankruptcy lawyers would charge. In short, …

Untenable Status Of Corporate Governance Listing Standards Under The Securities Exchange Act, Douglas C. Michael

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

United States securities markets operate under a system of supervised self-regulation created by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act). That system includes substantive regulation of the traders and the issuers of securities traded in those markets through the use of listing standards.

These listing standards have a unique status. They are part of a self-regulatory system, but are not classic self-regulation. The markets do not govern the traders of which it consists; rather, it governs outsiders—the issuers. The markets and the Securities and Exchange Commissions have sought to control issuers in ways not clearly related to trading in …

The Powers Of Shareholders Of A Societe Anonyme, David J. Supino

Vanderbilt Law Review

French corporation law,which is primarily statutory, has seen no comprehensive statutory revision in almost a century; and while literally dozens of amendments have been engrafted on to the basic corporate legislation of 1867, they are for the most part ad hoc legislative resolutions of particular problems which betray no underlying unity of design and which have broken the unity of the old legislation. The result is that the law is Janus faced, and the theories which the law embodies are not wholly in accord with social and economic needs.

In this necessary process of assimilating new insights into the law …

Non-Tax Aspects Of Thin Incorporation, Thomas H. Rainey Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

The coveted privilege of conducting business in the corporate form is not an unconditional grant.' As consideration for granting the corporate privilege of doing business with limited liability, the law requires that the shareholders "put at the risk of the business some stake which shall appear reasonably adequate for its prospective needs." This "stake," characterized as equity capital, represents that portion of the shareholders' capital investment which is required by law as the basis of financial responsibility for the protection of corporate creditors. This special fund is substituted for the personal liability which the participants would otherwise have for the …