Law Commons^™

Securities Class Actions As Pragmatic Ex Post Regulation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

Securities class actions are on the chopping block-again. Traditional commentators continue to view class actions with suspicion; they see class suits as nonmeritorious byproducts of self-interest and the attorneys who bring them as rent-seekers. Their conventional approach has popularized securities class actions' negative effects. High-profile commissions capitalizing on this rhetoric, such as the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, have recently recommended eliminating or severely curtailing securities class actions. But this approach misses the point: in the ongoing push and pull of securities regulation, corporations are winning the battle.

Thus, understanding the full picture and texture of securities class actions necessitates …

Private Investment Funds: Hedge Funds' Regulation By Size, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article focuses on hedge funds-a species of private investment funds. These funds appeared in the 1950s and remained active but small. Then, in a fairly short period, they grew enormously to over $1.5 trillion, although the estimates vary.¹ Hedge fund managers engage in more than twenty-five different categories of investment strategies.² Since 2002, the number of hedge funds has more than doubled to an estimated 9,000 funds,³ and their assets have grown by 400% to an estimated $1.4 trillion since 1999.⁴ Other estimates are higher, suggesting current hedge fund assets at $2 trillion and their …

Sarbanes-Oxley, Kermit The Frog, And Competition Regarding Audit Quality, Matthew J. Barrett

Journal Articles

The regulatory scheme after Sarbanes-Oxley has significantly improved public company audits in the United States, or at least has demonstrated the potential to do so, but the obligation to preserve client confidentially still prevents auditors from competing for new clients on the basis of audit quality. This paper suggests a simple way for the SEC to facilitate such competition within the existing regulatory framework. The SEC should require issuers and registrants to disclose whether their independent audits uncovered any financial fraud and, within specified ranges, the number and amount of all audit adjustments incorporated into the financial statements filed with …