Law Commons^™

The Future Of Reorganization Procedures In The Era Of Pre-Insolvency Law, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Several countries and regions around the world, including Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, are amending their restructuring framework to implement a pre-insolvency mechanism that includes most of the features that exist in the US Chapter 11 reorganization procedure. However, unlike what happens in the United States, where unsuccessful reorganizations lead to Chapter 7 liquidations, companies using this ‘de facto Chapter 11’ (DFCH11) are still allowed to use formal reorganization procedures. This article argues that, while the rise of the DFCH11 is not necessarily undesirable provided that various protections are put in place, jurisdictions implementing this restructuring tool …

Afghanistan's New Vat, Part 1: Invoice Matching Or A Unitary Digital Invoice, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Andrew Leahey, Yujin Li, Haseena Rahman

Faculty Scholarship

In the summer of 1990 two groundbreaking articles on business process re-engineering (BPR) were published, one by Thomas H. Davenport (a professor in information technology at Babson College) in the MIT Sloan Management Review, the other by Michael Hammer (a professor of computer science at MIT) in the Harvard Business Review. BPR is a management strategy that analyzes IT-intensive workflow designs and business processes within an organization.

On December 21, 2020 (Jadi 1, 1399) Afghanistan was scheduled to implement a 10% VAT. It has been delayed one year by the pandemic. When it does implement, Afghanistan will have significant workflow …

The Political Economy Of The Removal Power, Ganesh Sitaraman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, financial institutions targeted communities of color with expensive and risky subprime mortgage products. Hundreds of thousands of Black and Hispanic families were charged more for mortgages than their white counterparts or steered into expensive subprime loans, even though they qualified for cheaper prime loans. Over time, financial institutions like Countrywide pushed these "toxic" loans on more and more homeowners and expanded subprime lending throughout the country. When the music finally stopped in 2008, millions of families lost their jobs and their homes, and nearly $ii trillion in household wealth was …

Stewardship 2021: The Centrality Of Institutional Investor Regulation To Restoring A Fair And Sustainable American Economy, Leo E. Strine Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, which formed the basis for the luncheon keynote speech at the Rethinking Stewardship online conference presented by the Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School and ECGI, the European Corporate Governance Institute, the essential, but not sufficient, role of regulation to promote more effective stewardship by institutional investors is discussed. To frame specific policy recommendations that align the responsibilities of institutional investors with the best interests of their human investors in sustainable wealth creation, environmental responsibility, the respectful treatment of stakeholders, and, in particular, the fair pay and treatment of …

Symposium: The California Consumer Privacy Act, Margot Kaminski, Jacob Snow, Felix T. Wu, Justin Hughes

Articles

This symposium discussion of the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review focuses on the newly enacted California Consumer Privacy Act (CPPA), a statute signed into state law by then-Governor Jerry Brown on June 28, 2018 and effective as of January 1, 2020. The panel was held on February 20, 2020.

The panelists discuss how businesses are responding to the new law and obstacles for consumers to make effective use of the law’s protections and rights. Most importantly, the panelists grapple with questions courts are likely to have to address, including the definition of personal information under the CCPA, the application …

Securities Regulation And Social Media, Seth C. Oranburg

Law Faculty Scholarship

Federal securities regulation originally divided corporate finance into two neat categories, public and private. In 1933, private financing was limited to “sophisticated” investors but otherwise lightly regulated. Public financing became heavily regulated. In 1982, the SEC introduced Reg D, which introduced the concept of “general solicitation” to clarify the distinction between public and private offerings. Reg D is well understood to prohibit newspaper advertisements and permit direct solicitations to venture capital investors. This enabled great wealth consolidation in regions like Silicon Valley while effectively banning general solicitations in private offerings.

Now, social media communication challenges the definition of “general solicitation.” …

Shareholder Value(S): Index Fund Esg Activism And The New Millennial Corporate Governance, David H. Webber, Michal Barzuza, Quinn Curtis

Faculty Scholarship

Major index fund operators have been criticized as ineffective stewards of the firms in which they are now the largest shareholders. While scholars debate whether this passivity is a serious problem, index funds’ generally docile approach to ownership is broadly acknowledged.

However, this Article argues that the notion that index funds are passive owners overlooks an important dimension in which index funds have demonstrated outspoken, confrontational, and effective stewardship. Specifically, we document that index funds have taken a leading role in challenging management and voting
against directors in order to advance board diversity and corporate sustainability. We show that index …

The Capital Commons: A Plan For Building Back Better And Beyond, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

To build our Republic back better we must build our banks better. The overwhelmingly greater part of our investment capital is now publicly generated yet privately managed. But pervasive and still underappreciated recursive collective action predicaments endemic to all exchange economies, combined with the decoupling of profits from production made possible by stratified capital ‘markets’ in such economies, render this unsustainable.

The only way to get public capital allocation right, and thus to get credit modulation and long-term productive investment right, is to manage public capital publicly and private capital privately. This paper shows how to do that through the …

The Ecb And € E-Banknotes, Corinne Zellweger-Gutknecht, Benjamin Geva, Seraina Neva Grünewald

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Towards A Data-Driven Financial System: The Impact Of Covid-19, Nydia Remolina

Centre for AI & Data Governance

The COVID-19 outbreak has a growing impact on the global economy and the financial sector, which plays a critical role in mitigating the unprecedented macroeconomic and financial shock caused by the pandemic. Given the unprecedented nature of the current crisis, financial regulators and supervisors, central banks, along with governments and legislatures face challenges to maintain financial stability, preserve the well-functioning core markets, and ensure the flow of credit to the real economy. Even though the COVID-19 has slowed down our daily lives and stopped the operation of many industries, it did not have the same effect in the data-driven finance …

The Promises And Perils Of Insurtech, Lin Lin, Christopher C. H. Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The insurance sector, in riding the wave of the FinTech phenomenon, has been rapidly expanding, with a slew of firms having emerged to provide so-called “InsurTech” services. These services incorporate concepts such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, digitalisation and the sharing economy to various aspects of the insurance industry. This profusion of technology brings with it the promise of various benefits including increasing efficiency and lowering costs for not only insurers and intermediaries, but also businesses or consumers as end-users of insurance. However, the development of InsurTech comes with corresponding risks and regulatory concerns not currently accounted for by the traditional …

The Tax Treatment Of Haircuts In Financial Reorganizations, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Over the past few years, Singapore has implemented various ambitious insolvency reforms aimed at making the country an international hub for debt restructuring. This article argues that while Singapore has put in place one of the most sophisticated restructuring frameworks in the world, some tax reforms might be useful to maximise the potential of this new restructuring framework. Namely, it will be pointed out that the tax treatment of debt forgiveness granted by creditors in corporate reorganisation (‘haircuts’) should be reviewed. Under the current legislation, these haircuts may be treated as taxable income. As a result, financially distressed debtors may …

Valuing Young Startups Is Unavoidably Difficult: Using (And Misusing) Deferred-Equity Instruments For Seed Investing, John L. Orcutt

Law Faculty Scholarship

In a well-functioning market, reasonable investors are less likely to invest in companies when they cannot confidently value the opportunity. This presents a serious problem for young startups because they are unavoidably difficult to value. Partly in response to the valuation challenge, specialized startup investors evolved how they contract for young-startup investments. Around 2005 they began using deferred-equity instruments (first convertible notes, and later safes and the KISS). Deferred-equity instruments offer a partial solution to the valuation challenge by allowing specialized startup investors to thoughtfully invest in venture capital-eligible young startups without valuing them at the time of investment. Deferred-equity …

The Folly Of Credit As Pandemic Relief, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Chrisopher K. Odinet

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Within weeks of the coronavirus pandemic appearing in the United States, the American economy came to a grinding halt. The unprecedented modern health crisis and the collapsing economy forced Congress to make a critical choice about how to help families survive financially. Congress had two basic options. It could enact policies that provided direct and meaningful financial support to people, without the necessity of later repayment. Or it could pursue policies that temporarily relieved people from their financial obligations but required that they eventually pay amounts subject to payment moratoria later.

In passing the CARES Act, Congress primarily chose the …

States Should Consider Partial Wealth Tax Reforms, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article is a contribution to Project SAFE (State Action in Fiscal Emergencies). In other essays in this project, we explain steps the federal government should take to help state and local governments cope with their looming budget crises. The federal government is much better positioned to manage these crises than states and localities and, ideally, it would act sufficiently to prevent the need for state and local governments to cut spending or raise taxes. However, we fear that the federal government may fail to act sufficiently, leaving states and localities with the need to make painful spending cuts, raise …

How The Federal Reserve Should Help States And Localities Right Now, Darien Shanske, David Gamage

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The COVID-19 pandemic is a giant catastrophe, but the Federal Reserve can still mitigate the looming fiscal crises facing state and local governments. This article — a contribution to Project SAFE (State Action in Fiscal Emergencies) — builds on our prior background essay explaining state and local budget issues.

Regulatory Approaches To Consumer Protection In The Financial Sector And Beyond: Toward A Smart Disclosure Regime?, Nydia Remolina, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez, Yvonne Ai-Chi Loh, David R. Hardoon

Centre for AI & Data Governance

Traditionally, consumer and data protection policies evolved from issues of consent and information disclosure. The purpose of these regulatory approaches is the protection of consumers by reducing some contracting failures, such as asymmetries of information and a lower bargaining power, especially in transactions involving complex issues such as financial products and sensitive personal data. In the past, regulators have responded to privacy and consumer protection by adopting what this paper refers to as an “imperfectly informed regime”, in which consumers do not receive full information about the risks associated with their decisions, even if they are still protected through a …

Singapore’S Puzzling Embrace Of Shareholder Stewardship: A Successful Secret, Dan W. Puchniak, Samantha S. Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the UK created the first stewardship code which was designed to transform its rationally passive institutional investors into actively engaged shareholders. In the UK corporate governance context, this idea made sense. Institutional investors collectively own a sizable majority of the shares in most of the UK’s listed companies. In turn, if the UK stewardship code could incentivize them to effectively monitor management – to act as “good shareholder stewards” – the managerial short-termism and excessive risk-taking, which were identified as contributors to the GFC, could be avoided.The UK’s idea to adopt …

Financial Law And Technology: Book Reviews On Mobile Payments And Digital Innovation, Benjamin Geva

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Commercial Law Intersections, Giuliano Castellano, Andrea Tosato

All Faculty Scholarship

Commercial law is not a single, monolithic entity. It has grown into a dense thicket of subject-specific branches that govern a broad range of transactions and corporate actions. When one of these events falls concurrently within the purview of two or more of these commercial law branches - such as corporate law, intellectual property law, secured transactions law, conduct and prudential regulation - an overlap materializes. We refer to this legal phenomenon as a commercial law intersection (CLI). Some notable examples of transactions that feature CLIs include bank loans secured by shares, supply chain financing arrangements, patent cross-licensing, and blockchain-based …

Lost In Transplantation: Modern Principles Of Secured Transactions Law As Legal Transplants, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This manuscript will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming edited volume published by Hart Publishing, Secured Transactions Law in Asia: Principles, Perspectives and Reform (Louise Gullifer & Dora Neo eds., forthcoming 2020). It focuses on a set of principles (Modern Principles) that secured transactions law for personal property should follow. These Modern Principles are based on UCC Article 9 and its many progeny, including the UNCITRAL Model Law on Secured Transactions. The chapter situates the Modern principles in the context of the transplantation of law from one legal system to another. It draws in particular on Alan Watson’s pathbreaking …

Payment In Virtual Currency, Benjamin Geva

Articles & Book Chapters

By reference to an analysis of the operation of payment in traditional forms of money, this essay explores the meaning of ‘virtual currency’ and the mechanism for payment in it. Endeavoring to identify directions in which events will unfold, the essay sets the stage for a future detailed analysis of pertaining legal aspects.

An Essay On Pluralism In Financial Market Infrastructure Design: The Case Of Securities Holding In The United States, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming edited volume published by Oxford University Press. It builds on the earlier article, Beyond Intermediation: A New (FinTech) Model for Securities Holding Infrastructures, 22 U. Pa. J. Bus. L. 386 (2020), which argues that serious consideration should be given to modifications of the deeply intermediated securities holding systems in the United States and elsewhere. Many of the costs and risks imposed by the intermediated holding systems fall within the domain of the regulation of securities markets (internal costs), such as impairments of shareholder voting and bondholder claims against issuers. …

Little Power Struggles Everywhere: Attacks On The Administrative State At The Securities And Exchange Commission, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Global Challenges And Regulatory Strategies To Fintech, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez, Nydia Remolina

Centre for AI & Data Governance

The rise of new technologies has changed the operation, regulation and supervision of financial markets, bringing new challenges and opportunities for consumers, regulators, and financial institutions. This Article seeks to explore the most common regulatory strategies used by financial regulators around the world to address the challenges associated with the rise of fintech. These strategies include the imposition of bans, regulatory passivity, adoption of new legislation, permission on a case by case basis, and more interactive approaches such as innovation offices, accelerators and sandboxes. This Article argues that the adoption and desirability of each regulatory approach will depend on a …

Transnational Fiduciary Law, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Fiduciary law is expanding throughout the world.¹ It seems to be a new phenomenon, but in reality, it is not. Fiduciary law is ancient. It existed centuries ago in Mesopotamia, ² Rome, ³ Egypt,⁴ Greece,⁵ as well as in Jewish ⁶ and Christian laws.⁷ Fiduciary duties arguably developed later in Great Britain when master landlords left for the holy land on religious crusades and had to rely on others to manage their estates.⁸ The ancient rules, such as those found in agency law in Mesopotamia, may not have been as sophisticated as the current ones-such …

Uk & Ksa Vats: A Cutting-Edge Proposal – Mini-Blockchain And Vatcoin, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Mike Cheetham

Faculty Scholarship

This paper develops, extends, and clarifies themes introduced in five prior papers dealing with blockchain, and VATCoin in the context of both (a) the new VATs in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and (b) the mature VATs in the EU. Five additional papers on VAT technology advances in Fiji, with blockchain and VATCoin applications to New Zealand’s approach to online sales platforms (the Netlix Tax) are similarly referenced and extended. The GCC VAT papers were exploratory. For the most part, they were composed before any GCC jurisdiction had implemented a VAT, and in three instances even before the GCC Framework …

Financing Failure: Bankruptcy Lending, Credit Market Conditions, And The Financial Crisis, Frederick Tung

Faculty Scholarship

When contemplating Chapter 11, firms often need to seek financing for their continuing operations in bankruptcy. Because such financing would otherwise be hard to find, the Bankruptcy Code authorizes debtors to offer sweeteners to debtor-in-possession (DIP) lenders. These inducements can be effective in attracting financing, but because they are thought to come at the expense of other stakeholders, the Code permits these inducements only if no less generous a package would have been sufficient to obtain the loan.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the use of certain controversial inducements — I focus on roll-ups and milestones — skyrocketed in recent years, …

Corporate Law And The Myth Of Efficient Market Control, William Wilson Bratton, Simone M. Sepe

Articles

In recent times, there has been an unprecedented shift in power from managers to shareholders, a shift that realizes the long-held theoretical aspiration of market control of the corporation. This Article subjects the market control paradigm to comprehensive economic examination and finds it wanting.

The market control paradigm relies on a narrow economic model that focuses on one problem only: management agency costs. With the rise of shareholder power, we need a wider lens that also takes in market prices, investor incentives, and information asymmetries. General equilibrium (GE) theory provides that lens. Several lessons follow from reference to this higher-order …

The Evolution Of Offshore: From Tax Havens To Ifcs, Andrew P. Morriss, Charlotte Ku

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past 70 years, many smaller jurisdictions have evolved intro international financial centres (IFCs). Although different in their historic origins and in the financial products and services they offer, IFCs share a common development path. Understanding that evolution can shed light on what the next decade is likely to bring.