Banking and Finance Law Commons^™

The Role Of U.S. Government Regulatioms, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides detailed coverage of information resources on U.S. Government information resources for federal regulations. Features historical background on these regulations, details on the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations, includes information on individuals can participate in the federal regulatory process by commenting on proposed agency regulations via https://regulations.gov/, describes the role of presidential executive orders, refers to recent and upcoming U.S. Supreme Court cases involving federal regulations, and describes current congressional legislation seeking to give Congress greater involvement in the federal regulatory process.

Regulating The Corporate Governance Of State-Owned Enterprises In Investment Arbitration, Mark Mclaughlin

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The renaissance of sovereign investment is one of the defining economic trends of the 21st century. While many states have benefitted, and continue to benefit, from an influx of state-backed foreign investment, this embrace is not without its hesitancies. Host states are particularly concerned that state-owned enterprises (SOE s) pursue non-commercial policy objectives, maintain lower levels of transparency than their private counterparts, and operate with inferior standards of responsible business conduct. In response, domestic regulators have enacted a series of countermeasures for SOE investment, including requirements that such enterprises must invest on a “commercial basis.” However, the regulation of foreign …

Spactivism, Sharon Hannes, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, we propose a modified version of the SPAC designed to allow the public to participate in the world of corporate activism. Unlike existing SPACs, our version is designed for investments in public companies in order to change their course of action, not in private companies in order to make them go public, and overcomes many of the problems that pertain conventional SPACs. At present, direct investment in activism is reserved to affluent individuals and other professional investors of activist hedge funds. The public at large is barred from directly entering the activist arena. The current model comes …

Reversing The Fortunes Of Active Funds, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

In 2019, for the first time in the history of U.S. capital markets, passive funds surpassed active funds in terms of total assets under management. The continuous growth of passive funds at the expense of active funds is a genuine cause for concern. Active funds monitor the management and partake of decision-making in their portfolio companies. Furthermore, they improve price efficiency and managerial performance by engaging in informed trading. The buy/sell decisions of active funds provide other market participants reliable information about the quality of firms. The cost of active investing is significant and it is exclusively borne by active …

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 …

Debt In Just Societies: A General Framework For Regulating Credit, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

Debt presents a dilemma to societies: successful societies benefit from a substantial infrastructure of consumer, commercial, corporate, and sovereign debt but debt can cause substantial private and social harm. Pre- and post-crisis solutions have seesawed between subsidizing and restricting debt, between leveraging and deleveraging. A consensus exists among governments and international financial institutions that financial stability is the fundamental normative principle underlying financial regulation. Financial stability, however, is insensitive to equality concerns and can produce morally impermissible aggregations in which the least advantaged in a society are made worse off. Solutions based only on financial stability can restrict debt without …

Unravelling Civil Conspiracy, Pey Woan Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article seeks to understand civil conspiracy through the lens of its historical rationale. It identifies that purpose to be the protection of public interests as the tort was originally fashioned as an extension of criminal conspiracy to counter serious social ills. For lawful means conspiracy, this rationale is exemplified by the requirement for improper or illegitimate motive whilst “unlawful means” serves the same function in the context of unlawful means conspiracy. Counter-intuitively, understanding the tort in this way provides a means of restricting the tort and reigning in its “revolutionary” tendencies. Recognising the tort’s policy-based foundation would, it is …

Regulating Robo Advice Across The Financial Services Industry, Tom Baker, Benedict G. C. Dellaert

All Faculty Scholarship

Automated financial product advisors – “robo advisors” – are emerging across the financial services industry, helping consumers choose investments, banking products, and insurance policies. Robo advisors have the potential to lower the cost and increase the quality and transparency of financial advice for consumers. But they also pose significant new challenges for regulators who are accustomed to assessing human intermediaries. A well-designed robo advisor will be honest and competent, and it will recommend only suitable products. Because humans design and implement robo advisors, however, honesty, competence, and suitability cannot simply be assumed. Moreover, robo advisors pose new scale risks that …

Who Bleeds When The Wolves Bite? A Flesh-And-Blood Perspective On Hedge Fund Activism And Our Strange Corporate Governance System, Leo E. Strine Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the effects of hedge fund activism and so-called wolf pack activity on the ordinary human beings—the human investors—who fund our capital markets but who, as indirect of owners of corporate equity, have only limited direct power to ensure that the capital they contribute is deployed to serve their welfare and in turn the broader social good.

Most human investors in fact depend much more on their labor than on their equity for their wealth and therefore care deeply about whether our corporate governance system creates incentives for corporations to create and sustain jobs for them. And because …

Keynote Address, Regulating Corporate Governance In The Public Interest: The Case Of Systemic Risk, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

There’s long been a debate whether corporate governance law should require some duty to the public. The accepted wisdom is not to require such a duty—that corporate profit maximization provides jobs and other public benefits that exceed any harm. This is especially true, the argument goes, because imposing specific regulatory requirements and making certain actions illegal or tortious can mitigate the harm without unduly impairing corporate wealth production. Whether that is true in other contexts, this paper—delivered as the keynote address at the June 2016 National Business Law Scholars Conference at The University of Chicago Law School—questions if it’s true …

The New Synthesis Of Bank Regulation And Bankruptcy In The Dodd-Frank Era, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Since the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, U.S. bank regulation and bankruptcy have become far more closely intertwined. In this Article, I ask whether the new synthesis of bank regulation and bankruptcy is coherent, and whether it is likely to prove effective.

I begin by exploring some of the basic differences between bank resolution, which is a highly administrative process in the U.S., and bankruptcy, which relies more on courts and the parties themselves. I then focus on a series of remarkable new innovations designed to facilitate the rapid recapitalization of systemically important financial institutions: convertible contingent capital …

The New Global Financial Regulatory Order: Can Macroprudential Regulation Prevent Another Global Financial Disaster?, Behzad Gohari, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

This Article posits that the success of macroprudential regulation will depend on four factors. First, the economic philosophy of the central banker in charge of the domestic institution with jurisdiction over macroprudential regulation will prove crucial in the implementation of adopted regulation. If, like Chairman Greenspan, the banker is averse to the exercise of the Central Bank's regulatory oversight authority, then no amount or volume of policy or regulation will prevent or mitigate systemic risks and the accompanying shocks. Second, a sufficiently deep level of international cooperation is required to mitigate regulatory arbitrage, without being so broad that the ensuing …

The Mess At Morgan: Risk, Incentives And Shareholder Empowerment, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

The financial crisis of 2008 focused increasing attention on corporate America and, in particular, the risk-taking behavior of large financial institutions. A growing appreciation of the “public” nature of the corporation resulted in a substantial number of high profile enforcement actions. In addition, demands for greater accountability led policymakers to attempt to harness the corporation’s internal decision-making structure, in the name of improved corporate governance, to further the interest of non-shareholder stakeholders. Dodd-Frank’s advisory vote on executive compensation is an example.

This essay argues that the effort to employ shareholders as agents of public values and, thereby, to inculcate corporate …

The Problem With Consenting To Insider Trading, Leo Katz

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

New York Stock Exchange, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview of the origins and early development of the New York Stock Exchange.

The Impossible, Highly Desired Islamic Bank, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

The purpose of this Article is to explore, and explain the stubborn persistence of, a central paradox that is endemic to the retail Islamic bank as it operates in the United States. The paradox is that retail Islamic banking in the United States is impossible, and yet it remains highly desired. It is impossible because the principles that are supposed to underlie the practice of Islamic finance deal with the trading of assets and the equitable sharing of risks, profits and losses among bank, depositor and portfolio investment. It is true that much of this can be, and is, circumvented …

Bankers And Chancellors, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

The Delaware Chancery Court recently squared off against the investment banking world with a series of rulings that tie Revlon violations to banker conflicts of interest. Critics charge the Court with slamming down fiduciary principles of self-abnegation in a business context where they have no place or, contrariwise, letting culpable banks off the hook with ineffectual slaps on the wrist. This Article addresses this controversy, offering a sustained look at the banker-client advisory relationship. We pose a clear answer to the questions raised: although this is nominally fiduciary territory, both banker-client relationships and the Chancery Court’s recent interventions are contractually …

Corporate Governance Theory And Review Of Board Decisions, Christopher M. Bruner

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Behaviorism In Finance And Securities Law, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, I take stock (as something of an outsider) of the behavioral economics movement, focusing in particular on its interaction with traditional cost-benefit analysis and its implications for agency structure. The usual strategy for such a project—a strategy that has been used by others with behavioral economics—is to marshal the existing evidence and critically assess its significance. My approach in this Essay is somewhat different. Although I describe behavioral economics and summarize the strongest criticisms of its use, the heart of the Essay is inductive, and focuses on a particular context: financial and securities regulation, as recently revamped …

Bankruptcy And Economic Recovery, Thomas H. Jackson, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

To measure economic growth or recovery, one traditionally looks to metrics such as the unemployment rate and the growth in GDP. And in terms of figuring out institutional policies that will stimulate economic growth, the focus most often is on policies that encourage investment, entrepreneurial enterprises, and reward risk-taking with appropriate returns. Bankruptcy academics that we are, we tend to add our own area of expertise to this stable— with the firm belief that thinking critically about bankruptcy policy is an important element of any set of institutions designed to speed economic recovery. In this paper, written for a book …

Striking The Right Balance: Investor And Consumer Protection In The New Financial Marketplace: Introduction, Lisa Fairfax, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr

All Faculty Scholarship

On March 2, 2012, The George Washington University Law School's Center for Law, Economics & Finance and The George Washington Law Review jointly hosted a symposium entitled "Striking the Right Balance: Investor and Consumer Protection in the New Financial Marketplace."' The symposium focused on two principal topics. First, participants analyzed the impact of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ("Dodd-Frank") on investors and consumers in three areas of federal regulation-securities markets, derivatives markets, and consumer financial products. Second, the symposium evaluated the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 ("Sarbanes-Oxley") on its tenth anniversary and considered whether Sarbanes-Oxley's legacy might …

Lawyers In The Shadows: The Transactional Lawyer In A World Of Shadow Banking, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines how the role of transactional lawyers should change in the new world of shadow banking. Although transactional lawyers should consider the potential systemic consequences of their client's actions, their actions should be tempered by their primary duties to the client and by their responsibilities to the l,egal system more broadly.

A More Realistic Approach To Directors' Duties, Michelle M. Harner

Faculty Scholarship

Expectations for what fiduciary duties can achieve in the corporate context are unrealistic. This segment of the law—and the alleged deficiencies therein—are blamed for corporate scandals, securities fraud, failed business plans, and even a company's insolvency. Risk is, however, inherent in business, and human beings are flawed. Fiduciary duty law cannot change these basic facts. To the extent we think it can, we will continue to be disappointed and frustrated. This essay considers recasting (and to a greater extent codifying) directors’ duties in a positive frame to help foster better director oversight. It does not suggest that codifying greater clarity …

Adapting To The New Shareholder-Centric Reality, Edward B. Rock

All Faculty Scholarship

After more than eighty years of sustained attention, the master problem of U.S. corporate law—the separation of ownership and control—has mostly been brought under control. This resolution has occurred more through changes in market and corporate practices than through changes in the law. This Article explores how corporate law and practice are adapting to the new shareholder-centric reality that has emerged.

Because solving the shareholder–manager agency cost problem aggravates shareholder–creditor agency costs, I focus on implications for creditors. After considering how debt contracts, compensation arrangements, and governance structures can work together to limit shareholder–creditor agency costs, I turn to available …

Message In Mortgage: What Dodd-Frank's 'Qualified Mortgage' Tells Us About Ourselves, David Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Dialogue On The Costs And Benefits Of Automatic Stays For Derivatives And Repurchase Agreements, Darrell Duffie, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

For nearly two years, the two of us have had a running discussion of the costs and benefits of automatic stays in bankruptcy for qualified financial contracts (QFCs) such as derivatives and repurchase agreements, particularly those held by systemically important major dealer banks. Under current U.S. bankruptcy law, these contracts are exempted from the automatic stay. The advantages and disadvantages of this treatment have been a matter of significant debate for the past decade, particularly since the 2008 crisis.

After some background on AFCs and automatic stays, we provide our joint analysis of the costs and benefits of stays on …

Making Sense Of The New Financial Deal, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, I assess the enactment and implications of the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress’s response to the 2008 financial crisis. To set the stage, I begin by very briefly reviewing the causes of the crisis. I then argue that the legislation has two very clear objectives. The first is to limit the risk of the shadow banking system by more carefully regulating the key instruments and institutions of contemporary finance. The second objective is to limit the damage in the event one of these giant institutions fails. While the new regulation of the instruments of contemporary finance—including clearing and exchange …

Government Governance And The Need To Reconcile Government Regulation With Board Fiduciary Duties, Lisa Fairfax

All Faculty Scholarship

Corporate governance scandals inevitably raise concerns about the extent to which corporate directors failed in their responsibility to monitor the corporation and its managers, especially in terms of the latter's’ misdeeds. Corporate governance reforms strive to shore up directors' roles by seeking to ensure that boards have sufficient incentives to engage in effective oversight and to hold the boards more accountable. The current financial crisis has ushered in an era of significant government reform of the financial system and involvement in corporate governance matters. Such involvement has increased board of directors' responsibilities but has not reconciled those responsibilities with board …

Inside-Out Corporate Governance, David A. Skeel Jr., Vijit Chahar, Alexander Clark, Mia Howard, Bijun Huang, Federico Lasconi, A.G. Leventhal, Matthew Makover, Randi Milgrim, David Payne, Romy Rahme, Nikki Sachdeva, Zachary Scott

All Faculty Scholarship

Until late in the twentieth century, internal corporate governance—that is, decision making by the principal constituencies of the firm—was clearly distinct from outside oversight by regulators, auditors and credit rating agencies, and markets. With the 1980s takeover wave and hedge funds’ and equity funds’ more recent involvement in corporate governance, the distinction between inside and outside governance has eroded. The tools of inside governance are now routinely employed by governance outsiders, intertwining the two traditional modes of governance. We argue in this Article that the shift has created a new governance paradigm, which we call inside-out corporate governance.

Using the …

The New Financial Deal: Understanding The Dodd-Frank Act And Its (Unintended) Consequences, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Contrary to rumors that the Dodd-Frank Act is an incoherent mess, its 2,319 pages have two very clear objectives: limiting the risk of the shadow banking system by more carefully regulating derivatives and large financial institutions; and limiting the damage caused by a financial institution’s failure. The new legislation also has a theme: government partnership with the largest Wall Street banks. The vision emerged almost by accident from the Bear Stearns and AIG bailouts of 2008 and the commandeering of the bankruptcy process to rescue Chrysler and GM in 2009. Its implications for derivatives regulation could prove beneficial: Dodd-Frank will …