Law Commons^™

What Enron Means For The Management And Control Of The Modern Business Corporation: Some Initial Reflections, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The Enron case plays on many different dimensions, but its prominence is not merely part of popular culture's obsession with scandal du jour. Rather, the Enron situation challenges some of the core beliefs and practices that have underpinned the academic analysis of corporate law and governance, including mergers and acquisitions, since the 1980s. These amount to an interlocking set of institutions that constitute "shareholder capitalism," American-style, 2001, that we have been aggressively promoting throughout the world. We have come to rely on a particular set of assumptions about the connection between stock market prices and underlying economic realities; the reliability …

Bondholder Coercion: The Problem Of Constrained Choice In Debt Tender Offers And Recapitalizations, John C. Coffee Jr., William A. Klein

Faculty Scholarship

The past decade saw the flourishing of risky, high-yield corporate debt, often called "junk" bonds. Too many companies took on too much debt, and the chickens are now coming home to roost as these bonds have begun to default with increasing frequency.The magnitude of the problem is potentially enormous; by one estimate, $318 billion of debt has either defaulted already or trades at yields indicating the market's skepticism that it will be repaid on maturity.

Facing the prospect of default, corporate issuers are seeking to restructure or recapitalize their financial structures at a correspondingly increased pace. The market force driving …

Through Bankruptcy With The Creditors' Bargain Heuristic, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

It is a commonplace, but nonetheless true: the study of bankruptcy has attained a new respectability in American law schools. After years of modest enrollments and few genuine scholarly contributions, bankruptcy courses are now fully subscribed and many young academics are turning their attention to the technical complexities and conceptual underpinnings of modern bankruptcy law. A number of factors contribute to this new-found glamour. Most obviously, the enactment of the new Bankruptcy Code has fueled scholarly interest in reporting its modifications and changes and in exploring its theoretical unity. Simultaneously, there has been increasing resort to the bankruptcy process to …