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Full-Text Articles in Law
In Re The Walt Disney Co. Derivative Litigation Rewritten, Hillary A. Sale
In Re The Walt Disney Co. Derivative Litigation Rewritten, Hillary A. Sale
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In re The Walt Disney Co. Derivative Litigation is notable for upholding the broad latitude courts afford to boards through the business judgment rule. The case addressed a $130 million termination package delivered to former Disney CEO, Michael Ovitz, after fourteen months of underperformance at the company. This rewritten opinion, to be published in “Feminist Judgements: Rewritten Corporate Law,” (Kelli Alces Williams, Anne Choike, & Usha R. Rodrigues, eds.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, forthcoming 2022), follows the style of the Delaware Supreme Court and reaches the same outcome with a different approach. The opinion expounds on the corporate governance practices in …
Directors’ Duties Of Financially Distressed Companies In The Time Of Covid-19, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez
Directors’ Duties Of Financially Distressed Companies In The Time Of Covid-19, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
Unlike other jurisdictions around the world, several European countries require corporate directors to file for bankruptcy once a company becomes insolvent. For instance, under German law, corporate directors are required to file for bankruptcy within three weeks since they know, or ought to have known, that the company became insolvent on a balance-sheet or a cash-flow basis. Failure to comply with this duty may expose the directors to both civil and criminal liability. In Spain, a similar duty is imposed. However, instead of exposing directors to criminal liability, they can be subject to other sanctions (including disqualification and liability for …
Online Onboarding: Corporate Governance Training In The Covid-19 Era, Seth C. Oranburg, Benjamin P. Kahn
Online Onboarding: Corporate Governance Training In The Covid-19 Era, Seth C. Oranburg, Benjamin P. Kahn
Law Faculty Publications
Onboarding new directors is critical in the best of circumstances. What should organizations do when training new board members must be completed online? COVID-19 has forced both ordinary and extraordinary business functions to be conducted primarily online, and online onboarding may be necessary or preferred in a number of business contexts. This Article first reviews the best practices in director onboarding and explains the functional goals of those practices. It then explains how to leverage the power of virtual data rooms and virtual conference software to successfully onboard new corporate directors with virtual meetings. These strategies apply to both for-profit …
Corporate Power Is Corporate Purpose Ii: An Encouragement For Future Consideration From Professors Johnson And Millon, Leo E. Strine Jr.
Corporate Power Is Corporate Purpose Ii: An Encouragement For Future Consideration From Professors Johnson And Millon, Leo E. Strine Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
This paper is the second in a series considering the argument that corporate laws that give only rights to stockholders somehow implicitly empower directors to regard other constituencies as equal ends in governance. This piece was written as part of a symposium honoring the outstanding work of Professors Lyman Johnson and David Millon, and it seeks to encourage Professors Johnson and Millon, as proponents of the view that corporations have no duty to make stockholder welfare the end of corporate law, to focus on the reality that corporate power translates into corporate purpose.
Drawing on examples of controlled companies that …
Team Production Theory And Private Company Boards, Elizabeth Pollman
Team Production Theory And Private Company Boards, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
In their path-breaking article, A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout provided a new theory of the board of directors in a corporation. Drawing on the economic theory of team production, Blair and Stout argued that the board of directors serves as a mediating hierarchy for the firm as a whole, encouraging firm-specific investments from team members and reducing shirking and opportunistic behavior. While Blair and Stout provided a dramatically different view of the corporation from the conventional principal-agent account, they also delineated limitations to their proposed theory. Most importantly, they suggested that the mediating …
What Went Wrong: Prudent Management Of Endowment Funds And Imprudent Endowment Investing Policies, James J. Fishman
What Went Wrong: Prudent Management Of Endowment Funds And Imprudent Endowment Investing Policies, James J. Fishman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Most colleges and universities of all sizes have an endowment, a fund that provides a stream of income and maintains the corpus of the fund in perpetuity. Organizations with large endowments, such as colleges, universities, and private foundations, all finance a significant part of their operations through the return received from the investment of this capital. This article examines the legal framework for endowment investing, endowment investing policies, their evolution to more sophisticated and riskier strategies, and the consequences evinced during the financial crisis of 2008 and beyond. It traces the approaches to endowment investing and chronicles the rise and, …
Corporate Culture And Erm, Michelle M. Harner
Corporate Culture And Erm, Michelle M. Harner
Faculty Scholarship
The attitudes and actions of those viewed as leaders within a company (commonly referred to as “tone at the top”) help to define corporate culture and are critical to implementing a successful enterprise risk management (ERM) program. This paper explores the challenges and benefits of creating a risk-aware corporate culture, including the potential legal implications for boards of directors.
The Uneasy Case For The Inside Director, Lisa Fairfax
The Uneasy Case For The Inside Director, Lisa Fairfax
All Faculty Scholarship
In the wake of recent scandals and the economic meltdown, there is nearly universal support for the notion that corporations must have independent directors. Conventional wisdom insists that independent directors can more effectively monitor the corporation and prevent or otherwise better detect wrongdoing. As the movement to increase director independence has gained traction, inside directors have become an endangered species, relegated to holding a minimal number of seats on the corporate board. This Article questions the popular trend away from inside directors by critiquing the rationales in favor of director independence, and assessing the potential advantages of inside directors. This …
To Be Or Not To Be Both Ceo And Board Chair, Thuy-Nga T. Vo
To Be Or Not To Be Both Ceo And Board Chair, Thuy-Nga T. Vo
Faculty Scholarship
Part I of this article discusses the management and monitoring responsibilities of the board of directors. Part II explores the duality governance structure and its prevalence in corporate America. In Part III, the article examines and weighs the theoretical arguments for and against duality. Based on these arguments, this part assesses the impact of combined or separate CEO and Chair positions on the board’s performance of its management and monitoring responsibilities. Part IV turns to the empirical data on the effect of combined, rather than separate, CEO-Chair roles on corporate performance. Part V explains the views of corporate stakeholders on …
The Story Of Hewlett-Packard, Barbara Black
The Story Of Hewlett-Packard, Barbara Black
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
With the development of the modern corporation, corporate boards have been the locus of corporate authority, and particularly since the 1980s, boards and their performance have been under intense scrutiny. Nevertheless, corporate law has not developed a consistent theory for what boards are supposed to do; instead, it sends mixed messages about the functions and expectations of boards and the appropriate people to sit on them. The HP saga illustrates some of the dilemmas faced by directors confronted by these competing pressures.
Unconscious Bias And The Limits Of Director Independence, Antony Page
Unconscious Bias And The Limits Of Director Independence, Antony Page
Faculty Publications
Corporate directors make difficult decisions: How much should we pay our CEO? Should we permit a lawsuit against a fellow director? Should we sell the company? Directors are legally obligated to decide in good faith based on the business merits of the issue rather than extraneous considerations and influences. Naturally, some directors may have preferences, or even biases: Our CEO, my colleague and friend, deserves a lot; The company should not sue my fellow board member; We should not sell, because after all, I would like to remain a board member. But the courts presume that independent directors either do …
An Overview Of Brazilian Corporate Governance, Bernard S. Black, Antonio Gledson De Carvalho, Érica Gorga
An Overview Of Brazilian Corporate Governance, Bernard S. Black, Antonio Gledson De Carvalho, Érica Gorga
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
We provide the first detailed picture of firm-level corporate governance practices in an emerging market. We report on the corporate governance practices of Brazilian public companies, based primarily on an extensive 2005 survey of 116 companies. Most firms have a controlling shareholder or group. Board independence is an area of weakness. The boards of most Brazilian private firms are comprised entirely or almost entirely of insiders or representatives of the controlling family or group. Many firms have no independent directors. Financial disclosure is a second area of weakness. Only a minority of firms provide a statement of cash flows or …
The Fetishization Of Independence, Usha Rodrigues
The Fetishization Of Independence, Usha Rodrigues
Scholarly Works
According to conventional wisdom, a supermajority independent board of directors is the ideal corporate governance structure. Debate nevertheless continues: empirical evidence suggests that independent boards do not improve firm performance. Independence proponents respond that past studies reflect a flawed definition of independence.
Remarkably, neither side in the independence debate has looked to Delaware, the preeminent state source for corporate law. Comparing Delaware's notions of independence with those of Sarbanes-Oxley and its attendant reforms reveals two fundamentally different conceptions of independence. Sarbanes-Oxley equates independence with outsider status. An independent director is one who lacks financial ties to the corporation and is …
The Duty To Creditors Reconsidered - Filling A Much Needed Gap In Corporation Law, Richard A. Booth
The Duty To Creditors Reconsidered - Filling A Much Needed Gap In Corporation Law, Richard A. Booth
Faculty Scholarship
The most fundamental question of corporation law is to whom does the board of directors of a corporation owe its fiduciary duty. Recently, the question has tended to be whether and under what circumstances the board of directors has the duty to maximize stockholder wealth. But if a corporation is insolvent (or close to it), business decisions designed to maximize stockholder wealth may result in a reduction of creditor wealth. Although the conventional wisdom is that creditors must protect themselves by contractual means, there is a substantial body of case law that says that creditors can assert claims sounding in …
Slides: Community Forest Project: Grand Lake Stream, Maine, Steve Keith
Slides: Community Forest Project: Grand Lake Stream, Maine, Steve Keith
Community-Owned Forests: Possibilities, Experiences, and Lessons Learned (June 16-19)
Presenter: Steve Keith, Farm Cove Community Forest, Downeast, ME
62 slides
Larger Board Size And Decreasing Firm Value In Small Firms, Theodore Eisenberg, Stefan Sundgren, Martin T. Wells
Larger Board Size And Decreasing Firm Value In Small Firms, Theodore Eisenberg, Stefan Sundgren, Martin T. Wells
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Several studies hypothesize a relation between board size and financial performance. Empirical tests of the relation exist in only a few studies of large U.S. firms. We find a significant negative correlation between board size and profitability in a sample of small and midsize Finnish firms. Finding a board-size effect for a new and different class of firms affects the range of explanations for the board-size effect.
Authority Of The President Over Corporate Litigation: A Study In Inherent Agency, The , Roger J. Goebel
Authority Of The President Over Corporate Litigation: A Study In Inherent Agency, The , Roger J. Goebel
Faculty Scholarship
It is a traditional rule of corporate law that the board of directors exercises plenary power over corporate management. In fact, however, the twentieth century has witnessed a decided shift of the functional center of authority to the corporate officers. Although a basic residuum of authority remains in the board of directors, the officers, especially the president, in the majority of corporations exercise the day-to-day control of corporate affairs; In practice the modern corporation is occasionally directed by a general manager, but more often by the president (or perhaps, to use a mode currently in vogue for large public- issue …