Law Commons^™

A Contractual Approach To Shareholder Oppression Law, Benjamin Means

Faculty Publications

According to standard law and economics, minority shareholders in closely held corporations must bargain against opportunism by controlling shareholders before investing. Put simply, you made your bed, now you must lie in it. Yet most courts offer a remedy for shareholder oppression, often premised on the notion that controlling shareholders owe fiduciary duties to the minority or must honor the minority's reasonable expectations. Thus, law and economics, the dominant mode of corporate law scholarship, appears irreconcilably opposed to minority shareholder protection, a defining feature of the existing law of close corporations.

This Article contends that a more nuanced theory of …

Debt As Venture Capital, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

Venture debt, or loans to rapid-growth start-ups, is a puzzle. How are start-ups with no track records, positive cash flows, tangible collateral, or personal guarantees from entrepreneurs able to attract billions of dollars in loans each year? And why do start-ups take on debt rather than rely exclusively on equity investments from angel investors and venture capitalists (VCs), as well-known capital structure theories from corporate finance would seem to predict in this context? Using hand-collected interview data and theoretical contributions from finance, economics, and law, this Article solves the puzzle of venture debt by revealing that a start-up’s VC backing …

Financing The Next Silicon Valley, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

Silicon Valley’s success has led other regions to attempt their own high-tech transformations, yet most imitators have failed. Entrepreneurs may be in short supply in these “non-tech” regions, but some non-tech regions are home to high-quality entrepreneurs who relocate to Silicon Valley due to a lack of local financing for their start-ups. Non-tech regions must provide local finance to prevent entrepreneurial relocation and reap spillover benefits for their communities. This Article compares three possible sources of entrepreneurial finance—private venture capital, state-sponsored venture capital, and angel investor groups—and finds that angel groups have distinct advantages when it comes to funding innovation …

Freezing Out Ben & Jerry: Corporate Law And The Sale Of A Social Enterprise Icon, Antony Page, Robert A. Katz

Faculty Publications

Companies with social missions are frequently bought by larger, more conventional profit-seeking firms and just as frequently accused of “selling out.” Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. is perhaps the leading example: its takeover by international conglomerate Unilever is an oft-repeated cautionary tale of the negative proclivities of the publicly-traded corporate form and profit-maximizing corporate law. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, corporate law did not compel the sale, or sell-out, of Ben & Jerry’s. This familiar account omits a critical part of the narrative -- the company and its founders had established impressive anti-takeover defenses that, when pressed, the board declined …

African-American Entrepreneurs: Integration, Education, And Exclusion, Cheryl L. Wade

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In this Article, I describe some of the subtle, obscure, and hidden challenges that African-American entrepreneurs face by providing the narratives of three African-American businesspeople. Two of the narratives are about African Americans who started businesses in the first half of the twentieth century. Theirs is a success story. Their businesses thrived. Yet, for a variety of reasons, the success these two entrepreneurs enjoyed would be unlikely today, even with the legislation and policy initiatives enacted in the latter half of the twentieth century and aimed at providing access to opportunities for people of color. The third narrative is …

Debunking The Purchaser Welfare Account Of Section 2 Of The Sherman Act: How Harvard Brought Us A Total Welfare Standard And Why We Should Keep It, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

The last several years have seen a vigorous debate among antitrust scholars and practitionersa bout the appropriates tandardf or evaluating the conduct of monopolists under section 2 of the Sherman Act. While most of the debate over possible standards has focused on the empirical question of each standard's economic utility, this Article undertakes a somewhat different task: It examines the normative benchmark that courts have actually chosen when adjudicating section 2 cases. This Article explores three possible benchmarks-producer welfare, purchaser welfare, and total welfare-and concludes that courts have opted for a total welfare normative approach to section 2 since the …

Reply: Clawback To The Future, Miriam A. Cherry, Jarrod Wong

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In Clawbacks: Prospective Contract Measures in an Era of Excessive Executive Compensation and Ponzi Schemes (the “Article”), we undertook the task of proposing a doctrine of clawbacks that would not only furnish a framework for analyzing the term more systematically, but would also describe the ways the doctrine would relate to established rules of contract law. With his response, In the Shadow of the Omnipresent Claw: In Response to Professors Cherry & Wong (the “Response”), Michael Macchiarola has provided us with an opportunity to articulate these thoughts on the doctrine of clawbacks further, and for that opportunity and his …

The Essential Unity Of Shareholders And The Myth Of Investor Short-Termism, George W. Dent

Faculty Publications

The separation of ownership and control publicized by Berle and Means in 1932 persists today. Domination of public companies by self-serving and ineffective executives costs America billions of dollars every year and contributed to the current economic meltdown. Repeated efforts to solve this problem--including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, expanded disclosure duties, and more stringent requirements for director independence--have had little benefit and have sometimes made matters worse. The flaws in our corporate governance system are a growing problem for America’s economy as disillusioned investors increasingly place their capital in other countries.

Nonetheless, proposals for greater shareholder power have encountered criticisms: various …

For Optional Federal Incorporation, George W. Dent

Faculty Publications

The American economy suffers from the domination of corporations by chief executive officers who exercise control for their own benefit, at considerable cost to shareholders and to efficiency. The costs of this defect are rising as capital flees the United States for a growing number of countries that treat investors better. America’s corporate governance problem began and persists because corporations are franchised by the states, and it is in the economic interest of the states (especially Delaware) to cater to CEOS because they control the choice of state of incorporation. To break this destructive arrangement I propose optional federal incorporation …