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Full-Text Articles in Banking and Finance Law

Shocking Financed Emissions: The Effect Of Economic Volatility On The Portfolio Footprinting Of Financial Institutions, Ilmi Granoff, Tonya Lee May 2024

Shocking Financed Emissions: The Effect Of Economic Volatility On The Portfolio Footprinting Of Financial Institutions, Ilmi Granoff, Tonya Lee

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Many financial institutions are now calculating and disclosing their financed emissions, a class of metrics enabling these institutions to calculate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with investment and lending activities. These institutions have widely adopted the metric to estimate exposure to climate-related financial risk associated with GHG-emitting activities and to provide shareholders and investors a picture of how their financial activity impacts global climate change. Financed emissions metrics, despite widespread adoption, face two key methodological challenges: lack of comparability of outputs within and between portfolios, and vulnerability of calculations to portfolio volatility. Markets are naturally volatile, but the economic …


Regulatory Managerialism Inaction: A Case Study Of Bank Regulation And Climate Change, Hilary J. Allen Feb 2023

Regulatory Managerialism Inaction: A Case Study Of Bank Regulation And Climate Change, Hilary J. Allen

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In November of 2029, Hurricane Penelope struck New York City as a category two storm. Work had started on a wall to protect Manhattan from rising sea levels and storm surges, but the work was incomplete, and significant damage to Manhattan real estate was sustained. While almost all that real estate was insured, insurance companies were compromised by the sheer magnitude of the losses. Even with significant federal subsidies, they were unable to meet their full commitments on insurance policies. Some commercial real estate firms, who had never really recovered from the shift to remote working during the Covid pandemic, …


Insider Trading As A Precursor To Modern Business Ethics, Robyn Coleman May 2021

Insider Trading As A Precursor To Modern Business Ethics, Robyn Coleman

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

There has been a recent change in business that there is more focus on the “stakeholder approach” than shareholder primacy. This can be attributed to the early actions and illegality of insider trading that expected a step beyond a solely economic approach. This attitude was then replicated to become what we see as the modern business approach. Business now includes ethical investing, environmental focus, corporate citizenship, and emphasis on multiple stakeholders that was not always there. Companies have embraced this position while others have been criticized for not doing so. As this approach develops and changes, it will be enlightening …


The Alarming Legality Of Security Manipulation Through Shareholder Proposals, Artem M. Joukov, Samantha M. Caspar Jan 2021

The Alarming Legality Of Security Manipulation Through Shareholder Proposals, Artem M. Joukov, Samantha M. Caspar

Seattle University Law Review

Shareholder proposals attract attention from scholars in finance and economics because they present an opportunity to study both quasidemocratic decision-making at the corporate level and the impact of this decision-making on firm outcomes. These studies capture the effect of various proposals but rarely address whether regulations should allow many of them in the first place due to the possibility of stock price manipulation. Recent changes to shareholder proposal rules, adopted in September 2020, sought to address the potential for exploitation that some proposals create (but ultimately failed to do so). This Article shows the potential for apparently legal stock price …


The Layers Of Digital Financial Innovation: Charting A Regulatory Response, Teresa Rodriguez De Las Heras Ballell Jan 2020

The Layers Of Digital Financial Innovation: Charting A Regulatory Response, Teresa Rodriguez De Las Heras Ballell

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

The increasing penetration of digital technologies in financial markets is evidenced by promising adoption rates among users, expanding presence of fintech firms and bigtech providing techfin services, and the growing use of fintech solutions by incumbents. The increasingly popular term "fintech" captures the accelerated transformation of contemporary financial markets driven and enabled by technology, and encapsulates its multifarious potential impact on services, market structures, and business models. This Article first aims to devise and propose an analytical framework to understand the digital challenges to financial regulation based on the "layers of digital financial innovation" theory. Accordingly, digital innovation (fintech) is …


Petition For Rulemaking On Short And Distort, John C. Coffee Jr., Joshua Mitts, James D. Cox, Peter Molk, Edward Greene, Randall S. Thomas, Meyer-Eisenberg, Robert B. Thompson, Colleen Honigsberg, Andrew Verstein, Donald C. Langevoort, Charles K. Whitehead Jan 2020

Petition For Rulemaking On Short And Distort, John C. Coffee Jr., Joshua Mitts, James D. Cox, Peter Molk, Edward Greene, Randall S. Thomas, Meyer-Eisenberg, Robert B. Thompson, Colleen Honigsberg, Andrew Verstein, Donald C. Langevoort, Charles K. Whitehead

Faculty Scholarship

Today, some hedge funds attack public companies for the sole purpose of inducing a short-lived panic which they can exploit for profit. This sort of market manipulation harms average investors who entrust financial markets with their retirement savings. While short selling serves a critical function in the capital markets, some short sellers disseminate negative opinion about a company, inducing a panic and sharp decline in the stock price, and rapidly close that position for a profit prior to the price partially or fully rebounding. We urge the SEC to enact two rules which will discourage manipulative short selling. The petition …


Financial Contracting With The Crowd, Usha Rodrigues Jan 2019

Financial Contracting With The Crowd, Usha Rodrigues

Scholarly Works

Equity crowdfunding is broken. The current model imposes too many burdens on entrepreneurs in exchange for too little money. For alternative models, this Article looks to the time-tested venture capital financial contract, and the recent experience of initial coin offerings (ICOs). ICOs made headlines over the past two years, as the means by which blockchain technology companies raised billions of dollars to launch new cryptocurrency ventures. Although their novelty as a monetary and investing device is well known, ICOs also presented significant, unappreciated insights into financial contracting.

ICOs furnished an unprecedented experiment into how bargains would look if entrepreneurs raised …


Venture Capital Contract Design: An Empirical Analysis Of The Connection Between Bargaining Power And Venture Financing Contract Terms, Spencer Williams Dec 2017

Venture Capital Contract Design: An Empirical Analysis Of The Connection Between Bargaining Power And Venture Financing Contract Terms, Spencer Williams

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

This Article presents an empirical analysis of the connection between bargaining power and contract design using an original dataset of over 5,500 equity and debt venture financings from 2004–2015. Using the total supply of venture capital in the U.S. as a measure of relative bargaining power between entrepreneurs and investors, this Article finds that venture capital supply has a statistically significant relationship with price and non-price terms in both equity and debt financings. These results contradict one of three theoretical accounts of bargaining power and support the other two.


Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo Aug 2016

Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo

José Gabilondo

During the last financial crisis, what should the Federal Reserve (the Fed) have done when lenders stopped making loans, even to borrowers with sterling credit and strong collateral? Because the central bank is the last resort for funding, the conventional answer had been to lend freely at a penalty rate against good collateral, as Walter Bagehot suggested in 1873 about the Bank of England. Acting thus as a lender of last resort, the central bank will keep solvent banks liquid but let insolvent banks go out of business, as they should. The Fed tried this, but when the conventional wisdom …


Democratizing Startups, Seth C. Oranburg Aug 2015

Democratizing Startups, Seth C. Oranburg

Seth C Oranburg

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 intends to “help entrepreneurs raise the capital they need to put Americans back to work and create an economy that’s built to last.” The goal is to “democratize startups” by making capital available to diverse entrepreneurs in new geographies. Yet the net effect of securities regulations and market conditions is the opposite. Startup companies are encouraged to stay private so capital is consolidating in large, mature firms instead of recycling into new startups. Evidence of consolidation is that once-rare “Unicorns” (billion-dollar startups) now number over 111. More money is going into huge …


The Moral Undercurrent Beneath The Regulatory Regime Of Investor Protection, Huhnkie Lee May 2015

The Moral Undercurrent Beneath The Regulatory Regime Of Investor Protection, Huhnkie Lee

Huhnkie Lee

No abstract provided.


Superior Supererogation: Why Credit Default Swaps Are Securities Under The Investment Advisers Act Of 1940, J. Tyler Kirk Feb 2015

Superior Supererogation: Why Credit Default Swaps Are Securities Under The Investment Advisers Act Of 1940, J. Tyler Kirk

William & Mary Business Law Review

No abstract provided.


The Problem With Consenting To Insider Trading, Leo Katz Jan 2015

The Problem With Consenting To Insider Trading, Leo Katz

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


An Essay For Professor Alan Bromberg: Removing The Taint From Past Illegal Offers And Sales - 40 Years Later, Douglas M. Branson Jan 2015

An Essay For Professor Alan Bromberg: Removing The Taint From Past Illegal Offers And Sales - 40 Years Later, Douglas M. Branson

Articles

In 1975, for its inaugural, the Journal of Corporation Law at the University of Iowa solicited a lead article for issue 1, page 1. The editors solicited that piece from Professor Alan Bromberg, one of the great academics of securities law, then or at any other time. Professor Bromberg, of Southern Methodist University, died last year. This article began as a piece with three goals: (1) pay homage to Professor Bromberg, whom I knew personally, and his achievements; (2) update his 1975 article; and (3) add flesh to the treatment by examining closely practical, modern day situations in which rescission …


Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill Jul 2014

Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill

Steven Davidoff Solomon

One big focus of attention, criticism, and proposals for reform in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has been securities disclosure. Many commentators have emphasized the complexity of the securities being sold, arguing that no one could understand the disclosure. Some observers have noted that disclosures were sometimes false or incomplete. What follows these issues, to some commentators, is that, whatever other lessons we may learn from the crisis, we need to improve disclosure. How should it be improved? Commentators often lament the frailties of human understanding, notably including those of everyday retail investors—people who do not understand or …


Deferred Prosecutions In The Corporate Sector: Lessons From Libor, Justin O'Brien, Olivia Dixon Mar 2014

Deferred Prosecutions In The Corporate Sector: Lessons From Libor, Justin O'Brien, Olivia Dixon

Seattle University Law Review

Since 2008, the global economic downturn has significantly in-creased operating pressures on major corporations. Additionally, there has been a corresponding increase in corporate tolerance for corruption, which has coincided with a marked preference by regulators in settling, rather than litigating, enforcement actions. This Article argues that the expansion of prosecutorial authority without appropriate accountability restraints is a major tactical and strategic error. It evaluates whether the mechanism can be made subject to effective oversight. It argues that the current frame-work in the United States is highly problematic, leading to settlements that generate newspaper headlines but not necessarily cultural change. It …


Culture Wars: Rate Manipulation, Institutional Corruption, And The Lost Normative Foundations Of Market Conduct Regulation, Justin O'Brien Mar 2014

Culture Wars: Rate Manipulation, Institutional Corruption, And The Lost Normative Foundations Of Market Conduct Regulation, Justin O'Brien

Seattle University Law Review

The global investigations into the manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) have raised significant questions about how conflicts of interest are managed for regulated entities contributing to benchmarks. An alternative framework, which brings the management of the rate process under direct regulatory supervision, is under consideration, coordinated by the International Organization of Securities Commissions taskforce. The articulation of global principles builds on a review commissioned by the British government that suggests rates calculated by submission can be reformed. This paper argues that this approach is predestined to fail, precisely because it ignores the lessons of history. In revisiting …


The Timing And Source Of Regulation, Frank Partnoy Mar 2014

The Timing And Source Of Regulation, Frank Partnoy

Seattle University Law Review

The distinction between specific concrete rules and general abstract principles has engaged legal theorists for decades. This rules–principles distinction has also become increasingly important in corporate and securities law, as well as financial market regulation. This Article adds two important variables to the rules–principles debate: timing and source. Although these two variables are relevant to legal theory generally, the specific goal here is not to address and engage the rules versus principles literature directly. Rather, the goal here is to ask whether the debate about financial market regulation might benefit from a more transparent analysis of temporal and legal source …


Australia’S Experience With Foreign Direct Investment By State Controlled Entities: A Move Towards Xenophobia Or Greater Openness?, Greg Golding Mar 2014

Australia’S Experience With Foreign Direct Investment By State Controlled Entities: A Move Towards Xenophobia Or Greater Openness?, Greg Golding

Seattle University Law Review

Over the last few years, there has been considerable debate in Australia as to the appropriate regulation of foreign direct investment by entities affiliated with foreign governments. During that time, Australia has been a significant beneficiary of investment by sovereign wealth funds from many foreign jurisdictions, particularly by Chinese state owned enterprises. The Australian government, similar to governments of many developed Western countries, has struggled to properly calibrate its policy settings for regulating this type of investment activity. This Article considers the Australian regulatory regime and assesses Australia’s experience in regulating those investment flows during this period.


Evaluating The Performance And Accountability Of Regulators, Colin Scott Mar 2014

Evaluating The Performance And Accountability Of Regulators, Colin Scott

Seattle University Law Review

The global financial crisis came in the wake of significant reforms to the structures, processes, powers, and rules of the regulatory regimes for financial markets in many of the countries adversely affected by the crash. The global financial crisis came in the wake of significant reforms to the structures, processes, powers, and rules of the regulatory regimes for financial markets in many of the countries adversely affected by the crash. In this Article, I follow the logic of an argument that regulation necessarily has political dimensions, even where it may appear technical. I am asking questions about how we might …


Do The Securities Laws Matter? The Rise Of The Leveraged Loan Market, Elisabeth De Fontenay Jan 2014

Do The Securities Laws Matter? The Rise Of The Leveraged Loan Market, Elisabeth De Fontenay

Faculty Scholarship

One of the enduring principles of federal securities regulation is the mantra that bonds are securities, while commercial loans are not. Yet the corporate bond and loan markets in the U.S. are rapidly converging, putting significant pressure on the disparity in their regulatory treatment. As securities, corporate bonds are subject to onerous public disclosure obligations and liability regimes, which corporate loans avoid entirely. This longstanding regulatory distinction between loans and bonds is based on the traditional conception of a commercial loan as a long-term relationship between the borrowing company and a single bank, in contrast to bonds, which may be …


Crowdfunding For Biotechs: How The Sec’S Proposed Rule May Undermine Capital Formation For Startups, Brian J. Farnkoff Dec 2013

Crowdfunding For Biotechs: How The Sec’S Proposed Rule May Undermine Capital Formation For Startups, Brian J. Farnkoff

Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy (1985-2015)

No abstract provided.


Toward A More Resilient Financial System?, Joanna Gray Mar 2013

Toward A More Resilient Financial System?, Joanna Gray

Seattle University Law Review

The concept of “resilience” in the context of financial systems calls for closer analysis, as most of the current efforts to reshape financial systems seek to render them more resilient. Resilience has become a necessary complement to the paradigm shift taking place in global financial regulation toward “macroprudential” regulation—a term used to describe a new viewing platform and decisionmaking plane for financial regulation. From this new perspective, regulators can address the state of the financial system as a whole, as well as its component parts. This Article seeks to illustrate how legal and regulatory measures that foster resilience have become …


Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo Mar 2013

Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo

Seattle University Law Review

During the last financial crisis, what should the Federal Reserve (the Fed) have done when lenders stopped making loans, even to borrowers with sterling credit and strong collateral? Because the central bank is the last resort for funding, the conventional answer had been to lend freely at a penalty rate against good collateral, as Walter Bagehot suggested in 1873 about the Bank of England. Acting thus as a lender of last resort, the central bank will keep solvent banks liquid but let insolvent banks go out of business, as they should. The Fed tried this, but when the conventional wisdom …


The Long Road Back: Business Roundtable And The Future Of Sec Rulemaking, Jill E. Fisch Mar 2013

The Long Road Back: Business Roundtable And The Future Of Sec Rulemaking, Jill E. Fisch

Seattle University Law Review

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or Commission) has faced a number of challenges in the last few years. Judge Rakoff’s decision in Citigroup, the Madoff scandal, and the Business Roundtable decision are just a few of the developments that have dealt lasting damage to the SEC’s reputation. Critics have scrutinized the agency’s decisionmaking on multiple fronts—from its enforcement policy to the quality of its rulemaking—and the SEC has largely come up short in the analysis. The once-revered top cop of the securities markets has taken a hit, and it is unclear whether it can recover. The Business Roundtable decision …


The Future Of Shareholder Democracy In The Shadow Of The Financial Crisis, Alan Dignam Mar 2013

The Future Of Shareholder Democracy In The Shadow Of The Financial Crisis, Alan Dignam

Seattle University Law Review

This Article argues that the U.K. regulatory response to the financial crisis, in the form of “stewardship” and shareholder engagement, is an error built on a misunderstanding of the key active role shareholders played in the enormous corporate governance failure represented by the banking crisis. Shareholders’ passivity, rather than activity, has characterized the reform perception of the shareholder role in corporate governance. This characterization led to the conclusion that if only they were more active they would be more responsible “stewards” of the corporation. If, as this Article argues, shareholder activity was part of the problem in the banks, then …


Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill Mar 2013

Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill

Seattle University Law Review

One big focus of attention, criticism, and proposals for reform in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has been securities disclosure. Many commentators have emphasized the complexity of the securities being sold, arguing that no one could understand the disclosure. Some observers have noted that disclosures were sometimes false or incomplete. What follows these issues, to some commentators, is that, whatever other lessons we may learn from the crisis, we need to improve disclosure. How should it be improved? Commentators often lament the frailties of human understanding, notably including those of everyday retail investors—people who do not understand or …


The Market For Corporate Control: New Insights From The Financial Crisis In Ireland, Blanaid Clarke Mar 2013

The Market For Corporate Control: New Insights From The Financial Crisis In Ireland, Blanaid Clarke

Seattle University Law Review

In an ever-changing legal and economic environment, it is incumbent on us to subject all such premises to scrutiny in order to consider their continued application. This Article considers the effect of the MCC on the management of Irish credit institutions in the run-up to the financial crisis. Part II sets the background by explaining how the MCC has become an integral part of takeover regulation in Europe. The weaknesses in the efficient market hypothesis, which underlie the MCC and are summarized in Part III, appear not to have undermined the theory’s credibility in the minds of public policy makers …


Banking And Competition In Exceptional Times, Brett Christophers Mar 2013

Banking And Competition In Exceptional Times, Brett Christophers

Seattle University Law Review

This Article has two main aims: to provide a critical consideration of this contemporary antitrust “revival” from an explicitly political–economic perspective and to point toward some theoretical resources that might facilitate such an assessment.Part II looks backward at the evolution and application of competition law in the banking sector over the relatively longue durée. In this Part, I invoke the concept of “exception” to understand how antitrust policy has developed, and my chief interlocutors are the perhaps unlikely figures of Giorgio Agamben and Karl Marx. Part III looks forward and considers the central question around which the recent resurgence of …


Conceptions Of Corporate Purpose In Post-Crisis Financial Firms, Christopher M. Bruner Mar 2013

Conceptions Of Corporate Purpose In Post-Crisis Financial Firms, Christopher M. Bruner

Seattle University Law Review

American “populism” has had a major impact on the development of U.S. corporate governance throughout its history. Specifically, appeals to the perceived interests of average working people have exerted enormous social and political influence over prevailing conceptions of corporate purpose—that is, the aims toward which society expects corporate decision-making to be directed. In this Article, I assess the impact of American populism upon prevailing conceptions of corporate purpose, contrasting its unique expression in the context of financial firms with that arising in other contexts. I then examine its impact upon corporate governance reforms enacted in the wake of the financial …