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Full-Text Articles in Law
Acqui-Hiring, Gregg D. Polsky, John F. Coyle
Acqui-Hiring, Gregg D. Polsky, John F. Coyle
Scholarly Works
Facebook, Google, and other leading technology companies in Silicon Valley have been buying start-up companies at a brisk pace. In many of these transactions, the buyer has little interest in acquiring the startup’s projects or assets. Instead, the buyer’s primary motivation is to hire some or all of the startup’s software engineers. These so-called “acqui-hires” represent a novel — and increasingly common — tool by which the largest and most successful technology companies in the world satisfy their intense demand for engineering talent.
To date, the acqui-hire has attracted no attention in the academic or professional legal literature. With this …
Securities Law's Dirty Little Secret, Usha Rodrigues
Securities Law's Dirty Little Secret, Usha Rodrigues
Scholarly Works
Securities law’s dirty little secret is that rich investors have access to special kinds of investments—hedge funds, private equity, private companies—that everyone else does not. This disparity stems from the fact that, from its inception, federal securities law has jealously guarded the manner in which firms can sell shares to the general public. Perhaps paternalistically, the law assumes that the average investor needs the protection of the full panoply of securities regulation and thus should be limited to buying public securities. In contrast, accredited—i.e., wealthy— investors, who it is presumed can fend for themselves, have the luxury of choosing between …
Venture Capital, Agency Costs, And The False Dichotomy Of The Corporation, Robert P. Bartlett
Venture Capital, Agency Costs, And The False Dichotomy Of The Corporation, Robert P. Bartlett
Scholarly Works
An implicit dichotomy of the corporation exists in legal scholarship. On one side of the dichotomy rests the publicly held corporation suffering from a significant conflict of interest between its managers and dispersed shareholders; on the other side, the closely held corporation plagued by intershareholder conflict. This Article argues that understanding the agency problems that can exist within a firm demands a rejection of this traditional dichotomy and the theories of the firm built upon it. Using venture capital (VC) finance, this Article demonstrates how this dichotomy obscures how all firms -- public and private -- often face the same …