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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Separation Of Voting And Control: The Role Of Contract In Corporate Governance, Gabriel V. Rauterberg
The Separation Of Voting And Control: The Role Of Contract In Corporate Governance, Gabriel V. Rauterberg
Articles
The default rules of corporate law make shareholders’ control rights a function of their voting power. Whether a director is elected or a merger is approved depends on how shareholders vote. Yet, in private corporations shareholders routinely alter their rights by contract. This phenomenon of shareholder agreements—contracts among the owners of a firm— has received far less attention than it deserves, mainly because detailed data about the actual contents of shareholder agreements has been lacking. Private companies disclose little, and shareholder agreements are thought to play a trivial or nonexistent role in public companies. I show that this is false—fifteen …
Golden Parachutes And The Limits Of Shareholder Voting, Albert H. Choi, Andrew C.W. Lund, Robert Schonlau
Golden Parachutes And The Limits Of Shareholder Voting, Albert H. Choi, Andrew C.W. Lund, Robert Schonlau
Articles
With the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, Congress attempted to constrain change-in-control payments (also known as “golden parachutes”) by giving shareholders the right to approve or disapprove such payments on an advisory basis. This Essay is the first to empirically examine the experience with the Say-on-Golden-Parachute (“SOGP”) vote. We find that unlike shareholder votes on proposed mergers, there is a significant amount of variation with respect to votes on golden parachutes. Notwithstanding the variation, however, the SOGP voting regime is likely ineffective in controlling golden parachute (“GP”) compensation. First, proxy advisors seem …
Private Enforcement Of Company Law And Securities Regulation In Korea, Hwa-Jin Kim
Private Enforcement Of Company Law And Securities Regulation In Korea, Hwa-Jin Kim
Book Chapters
This chapter offers a brief overview of the private enforcement of corporate law and securities regulation in Korea, with particular reference to the current legislative efforts in the Korean National Assembly and recent court cases. This chapter also talks about Korea’s ill-fated and misguided adoption of the fraud-on-the-market theory in securities fraud litigation.
Protecting The State From Itself? Regulatory Interventions In Corporate Governance And The Financing Of China's 'State Capitalism', Nicholas C, Howson
Protecting The State From Itself? Regulatory Interventions In Corporate Governance And The Financing Of China's 'State Capitalism', Nicholas C, Howson
Book Chapters
From the start of China’s “corporatization without privatization” process in the late 1980s, a Chinese corporate governance regime, apparently shareholder-empowering and determined by enabling legal norms, has been altered by mandatory governance mechanisms imposed by a state administrative agency, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). This has been done to protect minority shareholders against exploitation by the Party-state controlling shareholders, the power behind China’s “state capitalism.” This chapter reviews the path of this benign intervention by the CSRC and the structural reasons for it, and then speculates on why this novel example of the China’s “fragmented authoritarianism” continues to be …
The Institutional Appetite For Quack Corporate Governance, Alicia J. Davis
The Institutional Appetite For Quack Corporate Governance, Alicia J. Davis
Articles
This Article offers evidence that higher quality internal corporate governance is associated with higher levels of ownership by institutional investors. This finding is consistent with the idea that institutions have greater reason than individual investors to prefer well-governed firms, but surprising given the substantial empirical evidence that casts doubt on the efficacy of internal governance mechanisms. The study described in this Article also finds that higher quality external governance is associated with lower proportions of ownership by certain types of institutional investors, also a somewhat surprising result given available empirical evidence on the positive relationship between external governance and firm …
Corporate Taxation And Corporate Social Responsibility, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Corporate Taxation And Corporate Social Responsibility, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
This Article will address the question of whether publicly traded U.S. corporations owe a duty to their shareholders to minimize their corporate tax burden through any legal means, or if instead, strategic behaviors like aggressive tax-motivated transactions are inconsistent with corporate social responsibility (“CSR”). I believe the latter holds true, regardless of one’s view of the corporation. Under the “artificial entity” view, such behavior undermines the constitutive relationship between the corporation and the state. Under the “real view,” such behavior runs contrary to the normal obligation of citizens to comply with the law (even absent effective enforcement). And under the …
'Quack Corporate Governance' As Traditional Chinese Medicine – The Securities Regulation Cannibalization Of China's Corporate Law And A State Regulator's Battle Against Party State Political Economic Power, Nicholas C. Howson
Articles
From the start of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) “corporatization ” project in the late 1980s, a Chinese corporate governance regime subject to increasingly enabling legal norms has been determined by mandatory regulations imposed by the PRC securities regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). Indeed, the Chinese corporate law system has been cannibalized by all - encompassing securities regulation directed at corporate governance, at least for companies with listed stock. This Article traces the path of that sustained intervention and makes a case — wholly contrary to the “quack corporate governance” critique much aired in the United States …
Private Regulation Of Insider Trading In The Shadow Of Lax Public Enforcement: Evidence From Canadian Firms, Laura Nyantung Beny, Anita Anand
Private Regulation Of Insider Trading In The Shadow Of Lax Public Enforcement: Evidence From Canadian Firms, Laura Nyantung Beny, Anita Anand
Articles
Like firms in the United States, many Canadian firms voluntarily restrict trading by corporate insiders beyond the requirements of insider trading laws (i.e., super-compliance). Thus, we aim to understand the determinants of firms’ private insider trading policies (ITPs), which are quasi-contractual devices. Based on the assumption that firms that face greater costs from insider trading (or greater benefits from restricting insider trading) ought to be more inclined than other firms to adopt more stringent ITPs, we develop several testable hypotheses. We test our hypotheses using data from a sample of firms included in the Toronto Stock Exchange/Standard and Poor’s (TSX/S&P) …
Pathway To Minority Shareholder Protection: Derivative Actions In The People's Republic Of China, Donald C. Clarke, Nicholas C. Howson
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 …
The Development Of Modern Corporate Governance In China And India, Nicholas C. Howson, Vikramaditya S. Khanna
The Development Of Modern Corporate Governance In China And India, Nicholas C. Howson, Vikramaditya S. Khanna
Book Chapters
Corporate governance reform has become a topic of considerable debate both in the US and in many emerging markets. Indeed, the discussion is important because these reforms may have potentially long-standing effects upon the global allocation of capital, and in understanding the ways in which governance norms are communicated across markets and nations in an ever-globalizing world. In this chapter we examine the corporate governance reform efforts of the world's two biggest and fastest growing emerging markets, the People's Republic of China (PRC or China) and India. In the process we find that our understanding of how and why corporate …
London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard
London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard
Articles
Jurisdictional competition in corporate law has long been a staple of academic-and sometimes, political-debate in the United States. State corporate law, by long-standing tradition in the United States, determines most questions of internal corporate governance-the role of boards of directors, the allocation of authority between directors, managers and shareholders, etc.-while federal law governs questions of disclosure to shareholders-annual reports, proxy statements, and periodic filings. Despite substantial incursions by Congress, most recently in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, this dividing line between state and federal law persists, so state law arguably has the most immediate impact on corporate governance outcomes.
Monitoring Of Corporate Groups By Independent Directors, Adam C. Pritchard
Monitoring Of Corporate Groups By Independent Directors, Adam C. Pritchard
Articles
Both the United States and Korea have reformed their corporate governance in recent years to put increasing responsibilities on independent directors. Independent directors have been found to be an important force protecting the interests of shareholders when it comes time to make certain highly salient decisions, such as firing a CEO or selling the company. This article compares the role of independent directors in the US and Korean systems. I argue that the US may have placed regulatory burdens on independent directors that they are unlikely to be able to satisfy, given their part-time status. By contrast, in the chaebol …
When 'Good' Corporate Governance Makes 'Bad' (Financial) Firms: The Global Crisis And The Limits Of Private Law, Nicholas C. Howson
When 'Good' Corporate Governance Makes 'Bad' (Financial) Firms: The Global Crisis And The Limits Of Private Law, Nicholas C. Howson
Articles
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, investors, analysts, legislators, and pundits have spotlighted “good” or “improved” corporate governance as a remedy for all that presently ails us. It is one remedy in a long wish list that includes tougher requirements for risk capital, liquidity, and leverage; compensation and bonus reform; reimposition ofthe Glass-Steagall-like separation of bank “utility” and “casino” functions; the downsizing or breakup of institutions deemed “too big to fail;” enhanced consumer protection; securities law liability for secondary violators (like credit rating agencies); direct taxation of proprietary trading; “macroprudential” regulation; and new transparency requirements for …
London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard
London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard
Articles
In the United States, state corporate law determines most questions of internal corporate governance - the role of directors; the allocation of authority between directors, managers, and shareholders; etc. - while federal law governs questions of disclosure to shareholders - annual reports, proxy statements, and periodic filings. Despite substantial incursions by Congress, most recently with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, this dividing line between state and federal law persists, so state law arguably has the most immediate effect on corporate governance outcomes.
Do Investors In Controlled Firms Value Insider Trading Laws? International Evidence, Laura Nyantung Beny
Do Investors In Controlled Firms Value Insider Trading Laws? International Evidence, Laura Nyantung Beny
Articles
This article characterizes insider trading as an agency problem in firms that have a controlling shareholder. Using a standard agency model of corporate value diversion through insider trading by the controlling shareholder, I derive testable hypotheses about the relationship between corporate value and insider trading laws among such firms. The article tests these hypotheses using firm-level cross-sectional data from twenty-seven developed countries. The results show that stringent insider trading laws and enforcement are associated with greater corporate valuation among the sample firms in common law countries, a result that is consistent with the claim that insider trading laws mitigate agency …
Stoneridge Investment Partners V. Scientific-Atlanta: The Political Economy Of Securities Class Action Reform, Adam C. Pritchard
Stoneridge Investment Partners V. Scientific-Atlanta: The Political Economy Of Securities Class Action Reform, Adam C. Pritchard
Articles
I begin in Part II by explaining the wrong turn that the Court took in Basic. The Basic Court misunderstood the function of the reliance element and its relation to the question of damages. As a result, the securities class action regime established in Basic threatens draconian sanctions with limited deterrent benefit. Part III then summarizes the cases leading up to Stoneridge and analyzes the Court's reasoning in that case. In Stoneridge, like the decisions interpreting the reliance requirement of Rule 10b-5 that came before it, the Court emphasized policy implications. Sometimes policy implications are invoked to broaden the reach …
All In The Family As A Single Shareholder Of An S Corporation, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn, Terrence G. Perris
All In The Family As A Single Shareholder Of An S Corporation, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn, Terrence G. Perris
Articles
Subject to a few exceptions, a corporation that has elected to be taxed under subchapter S of chapter 1 of subtitle A of title 26 of the United States tax code is not taxed on its net income. Instead, the income, deductions, credits, and other tax items of an S corporation pass through to its shareholders on a pro rata basis. To qualify for subchapter S treatment, an electing corporation must satisfy the requirements that are set forth in section 1361, one of which is that the corporation can have no more than 100 shareholders. One aspect of that requirement …
Dividend Policy Inside The Multinational Firm, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.
Dividend Policy Inside The Multinational Firm, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.
Articles
This paper examines the determinants of profit repatriation policies for US multinational firms. Dividend repatriations are surprisingly persistent and resemble dividend payments to external shareholders. Tax considerations influence dividend repatriations, but not decisively, as differentially-taxed entities feature similar policies and some firms incur avoidable tax penalties. Parent companies requiring cash to fund domestic investments, or to pay dividends to common shareholders, draw on the resources of their foreign affiliates through repatriations. Incompletely controlled affiliates are more likely than others to make regular dividend payments and to trigger avoidable tax costs through repatriations. The results indicate that traditional corporate finance concerns …
Insider Trading Laws And Stock Markets Around The World: An Empirical Contribution To The Theoretical Law And Economics Debate, Laura Nyantung Beny
Insider Trading Laws And Stock Markets Around The World: An Empirical Contribution To The Theoretical Law And Economics Debate, Laura Nyantung Beny
Articles
The primary goal of this Article is to bring empirical evidence to bear on the heretofore largely theoretical law and economics debate about insider trading. The Article first summarizes various agency, market, and contractual (or "Coasian") theories of insider trading propounded over the course of this longstanding debate. The Article then proposes three testable hypotheses regarding the relationship between insider trading laws and several measures of stock market performance. Exploiting the natural variation of international data, the Article finds that more stringent insider trading laws are generally associated with more dispersed equity ownership, greater stock price accuracy and greater stock …
Prevention Of Double Deductions Of A Single Loss: Solutions In Search Of A Problem, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn
Prevention Of Double Deductions Of A Single Loss: Solutions In Search Of A Problem, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn
Articles
In the current tax system, a corporation is treated as a separate taxable entity. This tax system is sometimes referred to as an entity tax or a double tax system. Since a corporation is a separate and distinct entity from its owners, the shareholders, the default rule is that transfers between them are treated as realization events. Without a specific Internal Revenue Code (Code) provision providing otherwise, such transactions will also require the parties to recognize the realized gain or loss. Congress has enacted several nonrecognition corporate provisions when forcing the recognition of income could prevent changes to the form …
China's Acquisitions Abroad - Global Ambitions, Domestic Effects, Nicholas C. Howson
China's Acquisitions Abroad - Global Ambitions, Domestic Effects, Nicholas C. Howson
Articles
In the past year or so, the world has observed with seeming trepidation what appears to be a new phenomenon-China's "stepping out" into the world economy. The move, labeled the "Going Out Strategy" by Chinese policy makers, sees China acting in the world not just as a trader of commodities and raw materials, or the provider of inexpensively-produced consumer goods for every corner of the globe, but as a driven and sophisticated acquirer of foreign assets and the equity interests in the legal entities that control such assets. The New Yorker magazine, ever topical and appropriately humorous, highlighted this attention …
The Cyclical Transformations Of The Corporate Form: A Historical Perspective On Corporate Social Responsibility, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Cyclical Transformations Of The Corporate Form: A Historical Perspective On Corporate Social Responsibility, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
This article describes the transformations underwent by the corporate form from its Roman origins to the present. It shows that every time there was a shift in the role of the corporation, three theories of the corporation (the aggregate, artificial, and real entity theories) were brought forward in cyclical fashion. Every time, however, the real entity theory prevailed, and it was the dominant theory during periods ofstability in the relationship between the corporation, the shareholders, and the state. The article describes this evolution in detail, and then attempts to derive normative consequences for the legitimacy of corporate social responsibility (CSR). …
Should Issuers Be On The Hook For Laddering? An Empirical Analysis Of The Ipo Market Manipulation Litigation, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi
Should Issuers Be On The Hook For Laddering? An Empirical Analysis Of The Ipo Market Manipulation Litigation, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi
Articles
On December 6, 2000, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story exposing abuses in the market for initial public offerings (IPOs). The story revealed "tie-in" agreements between investment banks and initial investors seeking to participate in "hot" offerings. Under those agreements, initial investors would commit to buy additional shares of the offering company's stock in secondary market trading in return for allocations of shares in the IPO. As the Wall Street Journal related, those "[c]ommitments to buy in the after-market lock in demand for additional stock at levels above the IPO price. As such, they provide the rocket fuel …
Tender Offers By Controlling Shareholders: The Specter Of Coercion And Fair Price, Adam C. Pritchard
Tender Offers By Controlling Shareholders: The Specter Of Coercion And Fair Price, Adam C. Pritchard
Articles
Taking your company private has never been so appealing. The collapse of the tech bubble has left many companies whose stock prices bordered on the stratospheric now trading at small fractions of their historical highs. The spate of accounting scandals that followed the bursting of the bubble has taken some of the shine off the aura of being a public company-the glare of the spotlight from stock analysts and the business press looks much less inviting, notwithstanding the monitoring benefits that the spotlight purports to confer. Moreover, the regulatory backlash against those accounting scandals has made the costs of being …
Should Congress Repeal Securities Class Action Reform?, Adam C. Pritchard
Should Congress Repeal Securities Class Action Reform?, Adam C. Pritchard
Other Publications
The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 was designed to curtail class action lawsuits by the plaintiffs’ bar. In particular, the high-technology industry, accountants, and investment bankers thought that they had been unjustly victimized by class action lawsuits based on little more than declines in a company’s stock price. Prior to 1995, the plaintiffs’ bar had free rein to use the discovery process to troll for evidence to support its claims. Moreover, the high costs of litigation were a powerful weapon with which to coerce companies to settle claims. The plaintiffs’ bar and its allies in Congress have called …
Competition, Corporate Responsibility, And The China Question, Jospeh Vining
Competition, Corporate Responsibility, And The China Question, Jospeh Vining
Other Publications
"Corporate responsibility" is not a peripheral matter. It is at the core of all decision-making on behalf of business corporations under American law. This paper examines the effort to add an exemption for "business" in corporate form to the exemptions from ordinary responsibility that are seen in other areas of activity - e.g., for the military, for lawyers in adversarial litigation, or for investigators in scientific research. It looks at a number of well known cases and points to the often neglected relevance of both the criminal law applicable to corporations as such, and the evolving professional responsibility of corporate …
A Control-Based Approach To Shareholder Liability For Corporate Torts, Nina A. Mendelson
A Control-Based Approach To Shareholder Liability For Corporate Torts, Nina A. Mendelson
Articles
Some commentators defend limited shareholder liability for torts and statutory violations as efficient, even though it encourages corporations to overinvest in and to externalize the costs of risky activity. Others propose pro rata unlimited shareholder liability for corporate torts. Both approaches, however, fail to account fully for qualitative differences among shareholders. Controlling shareholders, in particular, may have lower information costs, greater influence over managerial decisionmaking, and greater ability to benefit from corporate activity. This Article develops a control-based approach to shareholder liability. It first explores several differences among shareholders. For example, a controlling shareholder can more easily curb managerial risk …
Section 338 And Its Foolish Consistency Rules - The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds, Douglas A. Kahn
Section 338 And Its Foolish Consistency Rules - The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds, Douglas A. Kahn
Articles
The purposes of this Article are to examine whether there is any longer a reason for concern because a target corporation can choose selected assets for nonrecognition and to what extent the 1994 regulations properly deal with potentially abusive circumventions of tax goals. Before examining the current status of the consistency requirements, the historical background that led to the adoption of Section 338 and the operation of the section is discussed. The historical background includes: the judicially created Kimbell-Diamond rule, the codification and modification of that rule by the old version of Section 334(b)(2), the operation of the old version …
Should General Utilities Be Reinstated To Provide Partial Integration Of Corporate And Personal Income—Is Half A Loaf Better Than None?, Douglas A. Kahn
Should General Utilities Be Reinstated To Provide Partial Integration Of Corporate And Personal Income—Is Half A Loaf Better Than None?, Douglas A. Kahn
Articles
The General Utilities doctrine is the name given to the now largely defunct tax rule that a corporation does not recognize a gain or a loss on making a liquidating or nonliquidating distribution of an appreciated or depreciated asset to its shareholders. The roots of the doctrine, can be traced to a regulation promulgated in 1919 that denied realization of gain or loss to a corporation when making a liquidating distribution of an asset in kind. No regulatory provision existed which specified the extent to which realization would or would not be triggered by a nonliquidating distribution such as a …
Corporations, Shareholders' Right To Have A Dividend Declared And Paid Out Of Surplus, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Corporations, Shareholders' Right To Have A Dividend Declared And Paid Out Of Surplus, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Articles
In Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. (Mich. 1919), 170, N. W. 668, the questions were not new, and with one exception, the decision was not unusual, but the sums involved were enormos. The Motor Company was incorporated in 1903, under the general manufacturing incorporating act of Michigan (P. A. 232, 1903), for the manufacture and sale of automobiles, motors and devices incident to their construction and operation, with an authorized Capital Stock of $150,000-$100,000 then paid up, $49,000 in cash, $40,000 in letters patent issued and applied for, and $11,000 in machinery and contracts. In 1908 the stock was increased …