Law Commons^™

Private Equity And Venture Capital In Germany: How Europe’S Heartland Is Poised To Become The Next Bay Area, Jake Besanceney

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Abstract

This note examines the current state of private equity and venture capital activity and investment in Germany, and specifically in Berlin, in relation to the state of such activity and investment that existed in the San Francisco Bay Area prior to and following its tech explosion in the late twentieth century. Numerous factors such as political and ethnic diversity, a comparatively lower cost of living, and proximity to higher education institutes are propelling Berlin’s startup and tech scenes, and are eerily reminiscent of similar factors that fueled the Bay Area’s growth and attracted private equity and venture capital activity …

Self-Regulation In The Derivatives Markets: Stability Through Collaboration, Heath P. Tarbert

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Sound financial regulation does not require choosing between governmental and private action. Instead, optimal regulatory solutions often blend the expertise and adaptability of private-sector influence with the stabilizing effects of federal oversight. This collaborative framework has a rich history in U.S. derivatives regulation, which has long relied on self-regulatory organizations (“SROs”) like exchanges, clearinghouses, and the National Futures Association to help promote market stability and customer protection. SROs remain subject to oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”), which guards against the proverbial fox-in-the-henhouse scenario while advancing quintessential government functions like mitigating systemic risk.

The advantages of this self-regulatory …

Comparative Analysis Of U.S. And Saudi Arabia Investment Funds Regulations, Gabriella Tang

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The investment funds sector has always been a major player in the financial industry globally. As such, many countries with mature financial markets have enacted regulations to govern the activity and management of investment funds. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enacted the Investment Company Act of 1940(the Act) as an effort to restore investor confidence in investment funds and safeguard investors from future abuses after the market crash in 1929. On the other hand, emerging financial markets started to take part in regulations in the hope to attract more investors and outside resources. The Capital Market Authority of …

The Indian Securities Fraud Class Action: Is Class Arbitration The Answer?, Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Randall S. Thomas

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Abstract:

In 2013, India enacted one of the most robust private enforcement regimes for securities fraud violations in the world. Unlike in most other countries, Indian shareholders can now initiate securities fraud lawsuits on their own, represent all other defrauded shareholders unless those shareholders affirmatively opt out, and collect money damages for the entire class. The only thing missing is a better financing mechanism: unlike the United States, Canada, and Australia, India does not permit contingency fees, so class action lawyers cannot front the costs of litigation in exchange for collecting a percentage of what they recover. On the other …

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 …

Is Canada The New Shangri-La Of Global Securities Class Actions?, Tanya J. Monestier

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

There has been significant academic buzz about Silver v. Imax, an Ontario case certifying a global class of shareholders alleging statutory and common law misrepresentation in connection with a secondary market distribution of shares. Although global class actions on a more limited scale have been certified in Canada prior to Imax, it can now be said that global classes have “officially” arrived in Canada. Many predict that the Imax decision means that Ontario will become the new center for the resolution of global securities disputes. This is particularly so after the United States largely relinquished this role in Morrison v. …

A Bright Idea: A Bright-Line Test For Extraterritoriality In F-Cubed Securities Fraud Private Causes Of Action, Jennifer Mitchell Coupland

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Whether a foreign or American claimant has a private right of action in so-called ―Foreign-Cubed‖ or ―Foreign-Squared‖ claims under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rule 10b-5 has been the subject of much debate among U.S. courts, Congress, and the international community. Historically, these cases have been heard in the United States if the conduct had a substantial effect in the United States or on U.S. citizens (the effects test), or if the fraudulent or wrongful conduct occurred in the United States (the conduct test). However, in June 2010, …

Short Selling In A Financial Crisis: The Regulation Of Short Sales In The United Kingdom And The United States, Katherine Mcgavin

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

In a well-regulated market with minimal risk of abuse, the liquidity and information efficiency benefits of short selling far outweigh its potential harm. Contrary to the recent hostility short sellers face from market regulators and the popular press, short sellers in aggregate are neither market villains nor agents of destruction. While a small minority of short sellers have exploited lax regulation and inattentive enforcement of anti-abuse rules to manipulate stock prices and earn substantial fees, these rare episodes suggest that the world's major capital markets need better enforcement of existing rules and not new rules per se. The failure of …

Lowering The Cost Of Rent: How Ifrs And The Convergence Of Corporate Governance Standards Can Help Foreign Issuers Raise Capital In The United States And Abroad, Kyle W. Pine

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Since the early 1990s the United States has experienced a dramatic growth in the number of foreign firms choosing to trade their shares in U.S. markets. Meanwhile, Europe and other markets have not experienced this effect to the same extent. there has been an observable worldwide growth in stock market capitalization since the 1990s with an increasing number of foreign issuers choosing to cross-list their shares abroad, usually in the United States. Traditional explanations for why firms choose to cross-list have focused primarily on access to trade in more liquid markets. A more convincing theory for why firms cross-list, attributed …

A Forensic Study Of Daewoo's Corporate Governance: Does Responsibility For The Meltdown Solely Lie With The Chaebol And Korea?, Joongi Kim

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

At the end of 1999, one of the largest conglomerates in the world, the Daewoo Group, collapsed in a spectacular fashion. During its peak, Daewoo was a sprawling enterprise with over 320,000 employees with 590 subsidiaries overseas that operated in over 110 countries. Its management received widespread praise and academic recognition for its success. Yet, when the Asian financial crisis hit in 1997, it managed to commit a deception worth 22.9 trillion won ($15.3 billion) that was termed the "biggest accounting fraud in history, surpassing WorldCom and Enron . . . ." Years later, inner-workings of the conglomerate are finally …

Beyond Enron: Regulation In Energy Derivatives Trading, Alexia Brunet, Meredith Shafe

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation in December 2002 is the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. The Houston-based company, formed in 1985, became the nation's seventh-largest company in revenue by buying electricity from generators and selling it to consumers. Because Enron made the market in energy trading, its collapse fundamentally altered the U.S. energy trading industry. Equally important, the disclosure of Enron's role in California's power market crisis shattered confidence in deregulated wholesale-electricity and natural gas markets, creating obstacles for new players seeking to restore confidence in energy trading markets. New market entrants offer their clients a more complete …

The Equivalence Approach To Securities Regulation, Tzung-Bor Wei

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

It is undisputed that the world's financial markets are becoming increasingly international and increasingly integrated. "How should regulators respond?" is a hotly contested issue. Academic literature debates two competing approaches to international securities regulation--"harmonization" and "regulatory competition." Harmonization is the idea that rules and regulations should be standardized across countries as much as possible. Countries may achieve harmonization by ceding lawmaking authority to an international body or agency; alternatively, countries may agree to enact similar rules through their normal, domestic rule-promulgating procedures. In contrast to the harmonization approach stands the regulatory competition approach. Under this model, countries do not coordinate …

Ec Reforms Of Corporate Governance And Capital Markets Law: Do They Tackle Insiders' Opportunism?, Luca Enriques, Matteo Gatti

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Company and capital markets laws are rapidly evolving everywhere: there are few countries around the world where they have not been the subject of reform or where at least a reform agenda has not been devised. There are various reasons for this, both global and local. Among the global (or common) reasons for reform, two at least deserve to be singled out: large-scale market crises or prominent economic scandals, and financial development.

Shock Therapy' For Aktiengesellschaften: Can The Sarbanes-Oxley Certification Requirements Transform German Corporate Culture, Practice And Prospects?, Hudson T. Hollister

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Act) of 20021 was the U.S. Congress's hasty response to the wave of corporate scandals that had begun to devastate U.S. investor confidence during the previous year. Its sixty-six pages contain a wide range of measures designed to enhance the quality and independence of corporate audits and disclosure under the U.S. securities-regulation regime. The Act applies to public corporations-corporations that are required to file regular financial reports under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act). Objections from German corporations and observers were particularly vigorous. At least one German foreign private issuer registered with the SEC has …

A Securities Regulator Looks At Onvergence, Donald T. Nicolaisen

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

For many years there has been a dedicated group of practitioners, standard setters, business leaders and others from around the world who have worked to establish a single set of globally accepted accounting standards for the benefit of the capital markets. These people clearly had their hearts in the right place but, absent a binding mandate to apply the standards, it seemed largely a labor of love. Now I expect those pioneering initiatives and the many years of effort to pay off because in 2005 a large number of companies are joining what up to now has been a limited …

Cross-Border Securitized Transactions: The Missing Link In Establishing A Viable Chinese Securitization Market, Nicholas J. Faleris

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This article proposes that asset-backed securitization in China could be jump-started by first focusing on cross-border (sometimes called transnational) securitization, and by establishing a dependable group of regional investors. Cross-border securitization transactions would enable China to experiment with various packaging of state-owned securities on a trial basis through a transaction-by-transaction process. Thus far, the focus has been specifically on reforming the legal infrastructure so that China eventually would be able to attract investors and capitalize on an emerging market. Rather than attempting to both build an infrastructure and attract asset-backed securitization investors with large, sweeping changes, the market would be …

Multinational Regulatory Competition And Single-Stock Futures , Frank Partnoy

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Whereas these first two forms of regulatory competition are well documented and covered in the legal literature, the third form - which I call "multinational regulatory competition" - is newer and more difficult to characterize. Accordingly, any claims about future regulatory competition in this form necessarily are speculative. By "multinational regulatory competition," I mean competition occurring when a group of regulators from more than one sovereign forms a partnership as a multinational regulator and then seeks to compete with other groups of regulators, also formed from more than one sovereign. There is some recent empirical evidence that regulatory trends in …

Demutualization Of Financial Exchanges: Business As Usual, Caroline Bradley

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The article begins by outlining some of the history of mutual business forms, and the recent demutualization movement. Then, after examining the idea of exchanges as proprietary businesses, the article examines three new problems caused by demutualization: how shares in an exchange will be traded; how a proprietary exchange can function as a regulator; and the risk that a proprietary exchange will become a take-over target. The article concludes that there is no perfect arrangement for trading in an exchange's shares; that, if proprietary exchanges are allowed to act as regulators, they should be subject to some constraints as to …

Securities Price Risks And Financial Derivative Markets , Peter H. Huang

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The financial and popular media report almost daily on the volatility of securities market prices. Yet, many people continue to buy securities to hedge against or speculate on certain risks. People can also buy or sell derivatives to hedge against or speculate on fluctuations in securities prices. This Article discusses three regulatory policy implications of utilizing derivatives markets to reallocate the bearing of securities price risks. First, if there are too few non-redundant derivative markets, a competitive market equilibrium allocation of securities price risks is typically constrained Pareto inefficient. This financial economic result means that for typical economies, a regulator …

International Regulatory Responses To Derivative Crises: The Role Of The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission , Brooksley Born

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Over the past decade, as derivatives markets - and particularly the over-the-counter ("OTC") market - have become increasingly global in nature, the U.S.. Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC") - the federal regulatory agency that oversees futures and commodity option trading' - has played an active role in fostering international regulatory cooperation. The technology of the information age, allowing instant communication and electronic trading, has revolutionized financial markets, instituting around-the-clock, around-the-globe trading, globally active market users and market intermediaries, and an increasing pace of market innovation. Market crises now have the potential for widespread financial impact and require international regulatory response. …

Hedge Funds, Hot Markets And The High Net Worth Investor: A Case For Greater Protection, Helen Parry

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

shares; that, if proprietary exchanges are allowed to act as regulators, they should be subject to some constraints as to how they perform this function; and that, contrary to the ordinary case where we have reason to believe that markets discipline firms, a vigorous market for control of exchanges could have harmful effects. The concern that underlies these conclusions is a concern that a country's national interest in protecting its domestic capital markets for the benefit of domestic enterprise and investors is likely to be undermined in a world where exchanges act just like any other business. Management, are clearly …

New Legislation Permitting Stock Futures: The Long And Winding Road, William J. Brodsky

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This article will explain how the stock futures issue arose, how Congress handled it last year, and the application of the legislation to this new product. While I believe that the approach taken in the CFMA will allow stock futures to trade on a level regulatory playing field in many areas with stock options, which are regulated solely as securities, it will not remove all the disparities between these two competing products. That will only occur when Congress acquires the political will to merge the SEC and the CFTC to create a modem regulatory system for the U.S. equity markets.

Foreward: Mergers, Market Access And The Millennium, Eleanor M. Fox

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The symposium issue is a nice microcosm of the competition law issues facing the world. It presents the tensions between national control and world integration. It presents the twin, conflicting impulses to eschew internationalization, hoping to do well enough by deepened positive comity (Waller), and to embrace internationalization at least cautiously to address concerns where unharnessed operation of national interests obstructs efficient solutions and where internationalization is most likely to sidestep the political landmines (Fiebig).

Dangerous Territoriality Of American Securities Law: A Proposal For An Integrated Global Securities Market, The , John G. Moon

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Market participants, academicians, and governmental officials debated how the United States government should structure multiple securities exchanges for several years before Congress mandated the establishment of the National Market System in the 1975 Amendments to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. During the intervening twenty-five years, recurring issues concerning the transparency, fragmentation, and fairness of the National Market System have remained unresolved. Recently, the globalization of securities markets and the development of Internet technology that permits cost-effective transnational securities trades and markets have exacerbated these issues. In fact, Internet technology makes the development of an integrated global securities market not …

Integration Of International Financial Regulatory Standards For The Chinese Economic Area: The Challenge For China, Hong Kong, And Taiwan, Lawrence L.C. Lee

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This article initially reviews the current development of financial services that converge regulatory systems around the world. Along with focusing on banking and securities, this article assesses financial systems and regulators within China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan respectively. The evaluation of the CEA's financial system is based on recommendations issued by the Basle Committee. In addition, with respect to the principle of national treatment, this article evaluates the operations of foreign financial institutions in the CEA. In the future, participation in the WTO will enable the CEA to experience greater growth and increase its participation in the internationalization of financial …

Fasb V. Iasc: Are The Structure And Standard Setting Process At The Iasc Adequate For The Securities And Exchange Commission To Accept International Accounting Standards For Cross-Border Offerings? , Charles Canfield

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This comment compares and contrasts the IASC's structure and stan- dard setting process with the structure and process for promulgating ac- counting standards of the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB"), the standard setter for the United States. The purpose of this comparison is to determine whether or not the IASC's structure and process for standard development are adequate for the development of acceptable core standards. This comparison uses FASB, not for the purpose of imposing FASB as the standard setter for the world, but for the purpose of comparing the IASC with an established long-standing standard setter, and because the …

Regulation S And Offshore Capital: Will The New Amendments Rid The Safe Harbor Of Pirates?, Jon B. Jordan

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This article will explain how the securities laws were prior to Regulation S as they applied to the offshore offer and sale of securities. The regulation as originally adopted and the brand new safe harbors it brought to the laws governing offshore offers and sales will also be explored. Then the subsequent regulatory abuses and concerns in the marketplace surrounding the regulation and the Commission's response to these issues will be discussed. The amendments to Regulation S which eventually served as the Commission's way of halting these problems and the changes they brought to the regulation will be laid out. …

The Problem Of Corruption: A Tale Of Two Countries, Kimberly Ann Elliott

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This perspective provides an introduction to the problem of corruption, focusing on two questions: * What causes corruption? * Where is corruption most serious? The perspective concludes with a brief discussion of two countries - Kenya and Uganda - that seem to be going in opposite directions politi- cally and economically, as well as in their attitudes toward corruption.

Defending Sec And Doj Fcpa Investigations And Conducting Related Corporate Internal Investigations: The Triton Energy/Indonesia Sec Consent Decree Settlements, Arthur F. Mathews

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This article will summarize the foreign bribery/corrupt foreign pay- ments provisions of the FCPA, briefly survey the related books and records and internal accounting controls provisions, analyze available defenses to civil and criminal FCPA charges, and explore sensitive substantive and strategic issues that arise in the defense of SEC and DOJ/grand jury investi- gations and in the conduct of related corporate internal investigations. This article will also analyze the recent SEC consent decree settlements in the Triton Energy/Indonesia case, and explore the types of defenses that might be pursued if an FCPA foreign payments case like Triton were litigated rather …

Does Russia Need A Securities Law?, Greg Lumelsky

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The question in the title of this article is not necessarily rhetorical. Perhaps a more appropriate inquiry is, does Russia need its current securi- ties law?' The response to the titular question is, as I will argue, clearly yes. The answer to the second question is to a large extent negative. Given the prevailing economic conditions in Russia, the course of enterprise pri- vatization, and the principal institutions shaping Russian capital markets, there is good reason to think that rather than assisting the growth and en- trenchment of a market in securities, much of the current Russian securities legislation will …