Banking and Finance Law Commons^™

Uncovering Elon's Data Empire, Carliss Chatman, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In 2022, Elon Musk publicly announced that he would purchase Twitter after acquiring a five percent stake in the company. His failure to report this acquisition—and the company’s failure to notice—allowed Musk to continue purchasing stock at a deflated price, costing the company more than $156 million. After the signing of a merger agreement, the details of the transaction caused wild fluctuations in Tesla’s stock price. Musk’s complaints about the management of Twitter and the existence of bots on the platform led Twitter’s stock to also drop in value, as did Musk’s attempts to withdraw from the transaction. Even after …

Expanding Mfw: Delaware Law Should Offer A Business Judgment Rule Safe Harbor For All Conflicted Controller Transactions, Alex Lindsey

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

While courts usually defer to a board’s business decisions under the business judgment rule, courts will apply a much less deferential standard of review due to loyalty concerns if a conflicted controller is involved in a business decision such as a merger. However, in Kahn v. M & F Worldwide (“MFW”) when a squeeze out merger was challenged by a minority stockholder, the Delaware Supreme Court reviewed the transaction under the deferential business judgment rule standard because the Court found that the structure of the transaction neutralized the controller loyalty concerns. Building on this reasoning, the Court developed a checklist …

Pricing Corporate Governance, Albert Choi

Articles

Scholars and practitioners have long theorized that by penalizing firms with unattractive governance features, the stock market incentivizes firms to adopt the optimal governance structure at their initial public offerings (IPOs). This theory, however, does not seem to match with practice. Not only do many IPO firms offer putatively suboptimal governance arrangements, such as staggered boards and dual-class structures, but these arrangements have been gaining popularity among IPO firms. This Article argues that the IPO market is unlikely to provide the necessary discipline to incentivize companies to adopt the optimal governance package. In particular, when the optimal governance package differs …

Wireless Investors & Apathy Obsolescence, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Christina M. Sautter

Faculty Works

This Article discusses how a subgenre of retail investors makes investors’ apathy obsolete. In prior work, we dub retail investors who rely on technology and online communications in their investing and corporate governance endeavors “wireless investors.” By applying game theory, this Article discusses how wireless investors’ global-scale online interactions allow them to circulate information and coordinate, obliterating collective action problems.

Initiation Payments, Scott Hirst

Faculty Scholarship

Many of the central discussions in corporate governance, including those regarding proxy contests, shareholder proposals, and other activism or stewardship, can be understood as a single question: Is there under-initiation of corporate changes that investors would collectively prefer?

This Article sheds light on this question in three ways. First, the Article proposes a theory of investor initiation, which explains the hypothesis that there is under-initiation of collectively-preferred corporate change by investors. Even though investors collectively prefer that certain corporate changes take place, the costs to any individual investor from initiating such changes through high-cost proxy contests, or even low-cost shareholder …

The Meme Stock Frenzy: Origins And Implications, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, Yoon-Ho Alex Lee

Law & Economics Working Papers

In 2021, several publicly traded companies, such as GameStop and AMC, became “meme stocks,” experiencing a sharp rise in their stock prices through a dramatic influx of retail investors into their shareholder base. Analyses of the meme stock surge and its implications for corporate governance have focused on the idiosyncratic creation of online communities around particular stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Article, we argue that the emergence of meme stocks is part of longer-running digital transformations in trading, investing, and governance. On the trading front, the sudden abolition of commissions by major online brokerages in 2019 reduced entry …

Wireless Investors & Apathy Obsolescence, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Christina M. Sautter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article discusses how a subgenre of retail investors makes investors’ apathy obsolete. In prior work, we dub this genre of retail investors “wireless investors” for their reliance on technology and online communications. By applying game theory, this Article discusses how wireless investors’ global-scale online communications allow them to circulate information and coordinate, obliterating collective action problems.

A Proposed Sec Cyber Data Disclosure Advisory Commission, Lawrence J. Trautman, Neal Newman

Faculty Scholarship

Constant cyber threats result in: intellectual property loss; data disruption; ransomware attacks; theft of valuable company intellectual property and sensitive customer information. During March 2022, The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a proposed rule addressing Cybersecurity Risk Management, Strategy, Governance, and Incident Disclosure, which requires: 1. Current reporting about material cybersecurity incidents; 2. Periodic disclosures about a registrant’s policies and procedures to identify and manage cybersecurity risks; 3. Management’s role in implementing cybersecurity policies and procedures; 4. Board of directors’ cybersecurity expertise, if any, and its oversight of cybersecurity risk; 5. Registrants to provide updates about previously reported cybersecurity …

The Environmental, Social, Governance (Esg) Debate Emerges From The Soil Of Climate Denial, Lawrence J. Trautman, Neal Newman

Faculty Scholarship

It has been almost six decades since Rachel Carson’s ominous warning of pending environmental disaster. During 2019 the United Nations requested urgent action from world leaders, given that “just over a decade is all that remains to stop irreversible damage from climate change.” With every passing year, damage resulting from destructive climate change causes increased pain, suffering, death and massive property loss. During 2020 and 2021 alone, severe weather events have included: destructive fires in California; record breaking freeze, power outage, and threat to the electrical grid in Texas; continuation of disruptive drought in U.S. Western states; and record-breaking high …

Big Three Power, And Why It Matters, Scott Hirst, Lucian Bebchuk

Faculty Scholarship

This Article focuses on the power and corporate governance significance of the three largest index fund managers commonly referred to collectively as the “Big Three.” We present current evidence on the substantial voting power of the Big Three and explain why it is likely to persist and, indeed, further grow. We show that, due to their voting power, the Big Three have considerable influence on corporate outcomes through both what they do and what they fail to do. We also discuss the Big Three’s undesirable incentives both to underinvest in stewardship and to be excessively deferential to corporate managers.

In …

The Wireless Investors Movement, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Christina M. Sautter

Faculty Works

The inaugural guest academic article for the University of Chicago Business Law Review Blog discusses how Millennial and GenZ investors can set in motion a social movement with disruptive effects on the current corporate governance paradigm. It refers to Millennial and GenZ investors as “wireless investors” and their social movement as the “Wireless Investors Movement.” The Wireless Investors Movement, fueled by wireless investors’ vision of the world and technology savviness, will bring corporations to pursue social and environmental causes. This short contribution analyzes the characteristics of the Wireless Investors Movement and the effects it will have on corporate governance.

The Banker Removal Power, Da Lin, Lev Menand

Faculty Scholarship

The Federal Reserve (“the Fed”) can remove bankers from office if they violate the law, engage in unsafe or unsound practices, or breach their fiduciary duties. The Fed, however, has used this power so rarely that few even realize it exists. Although major U.S. banks have admitted to repeated and flagrant lawbreaking in recent years, the Fed has never removed a senior executive from one of these institutions.

This Article offers the first comprehensive account of the banker removal power. It makes four contributions. First, drawing on a range of primary sources, it recovers the power’s statutory foundations, showing that …

Theory, Evidence, And Policy On Dual-Class Shares: A Country-Specific Response To A Global Debate, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Dual-class shares have become one of the most controversial issues in today´s capital markets and corporate governance debates around the world. Namely, it is not clear whether companies should be allowed to go public with dual-class shares and, if so, which restrictions (if any) should be imposed. Three primary regulatory models have been adopted to deal with dual-class shares: (i) prohibitions, existing in countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Colombia, or Argentina; (ii) the permissive model adopted in several jurisdictions, including Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands, and particularly the United States; and (iii) the restrictive approach recently implemented in Hong …

Rethinking "Political" Considerations In Investment, David H. Webber

Faculty Scholarship

Five years ago, Professor David H. Webber was invited to deliver an address both to our Delaware Law School community and to the Delaware Bench and Bar as Visiting Scholar in Residence of Corporate and Business Law. Webber's Speech, "Rethinking 'Political' Considerations in Investment," made several predictions about the rise of politicized investment which were quite prescient. As relevant today as when it was delivered, this piece explores the consideration of investment factors outside the traditional realm of shareholder profit maximization, both in its current state and in the future. Webber's analysis of how investors balance the role of capital …

Cleaning Corporate Governance, Jens Frankenreiter, Cathy Hwang, Yaron Nili, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Although empirical scholarship dominates the field of law and finance, much of it shares a common vulnerability: an abiding faith in the accuracy and integrity of a small, specialized collection of corporate governance data. In this paper, we unveil a novel collection of three decades’ worth of corporate charters for thousands of public companies, which shows that this faith is misplaced.

We make three principal contributions to the literature. First, we label our corpus for a variety of firm- and state-level governance features. Doing so reveals significant infirmities within the most well-known corporate governance datasets, including an error rate exceeding …

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 …

Horizontal Directors, Yaron Nili

Northwestern University Law Review

Directors wield increasing influence in corporate America, making pivotal decisions regarding corporate affairs and management. A robust literature recognizes directors’ important role and examines their incentives and performance. In particular, scholars have worried that “busy directors”—those who serve on multiple corporate boards—may face time constraints that affect their performance. Little attention, however, has been paid to directors who sit on the boards of multiple companies within the same industry. This Article terms them “horizontal directors” and spotlights, for the first time, the legal and policy issues they raise. The “horizontal” feature of directorships, a term often used in the antitrust …

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls: Fiduciary Duties In Venture Capital Backed Startups, Sarath Sanga, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Venture-capital-backed startups are often crucibles of conflict between common and preferred shareholders, particularly around exit decisions. Such conflicts are so common, in fact, that they have catalyzed an emergent judicial precedent – the Trados doctrine – that requires boards to prioritize common shareholders' interest and to treat preferred shareholders as contractual claimants. We evaluate the Trados doctrine using a model of startup governance that interacts capital structure, corporate governance, and liability rules. The nature and degree of inter-shareholder conflict turns not only on the relative rights and options of equity participants, but also on a firm's intrinsic value as well …

Tepoel Lecture: Bond Trustees And The Rising Challenge Of Activist Investors, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

(Un)Corporate Crypto-Governance, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Public blockchain protocols face a serious governance crisis. Thus far, blockchain protocols have followed the path of early Internet governance. If the architects of blockchain protocols are not careful, they may suffer a similar fate — increasing governmental control, greater centralization, and decreasing privacy. As blockchain architects begin to consider better governance structures, there is a legal movement underway to impose a fiduciary framework upon open source software developers. If the movement succeeds, the consequences for open source software development could be dire. If arbitrarily imposed upon blockchain communities without consideration of variances among communities or the reality of how …

The Covid-19 Pandemic And Business Law: A Series Of Posts From The Oxford Business Law Blog, Gert-Jan Boon, Markus K. Brunnermeier, Horst Eidenmueller, Luca Enriques, Aurelio Gurrea-Martínez, Kathryn Judge, Jean-Pierre Landau, Marco Pagano, Ricardo Reis, Kristin Van Zwieten

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 Pandemic is the biggest challenge for the world since World War Two, warned UN Secretary General, António Guterres, on 1 April 2020. Millions of lives may be lost. The threat to our livelihoods is extreme as well. Job losses worldwide may exceed 25 million.

Legal systems are under extreme stress too. Contracts are disrupted, judicial services suspended, and insolvency procedures tested. Quarantine regulations threaten constitutional liberties. However, laws can also be a powerful tool to contain the effects of the pandemic on our lives and reduce its economic fallout. To achieve this goal, rules designed for normal times …

Crashing The Boards: A Comparative Analysis Of The Boxing Out Of Women On Boards In The United States And Canada, Diana C. Nicholls Mutter

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This paper will first provide a critical, comparative look at the Canadian and the federal American responses to the under-representation of women on boards of large, publicly traded corporations. There will be a discussion about the competing conceptions which emerge in addressing the regulation of women on boards in the United States and Canada and why each jurisdiction implemented its policy when it did. The conceptions arising out of questions about under-representation of women on boards tend to fall within two categories: business case rationales and normative rationales. Given the competing conceptions of this issue, this paper will attempt to …

Theory, Evidence And Policy On Dual-Class Shares: A Country-Specific Response To A Global Debate, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Dual-class shares have become one of the most controversial issues in today´s capital markets and corporate governance debates around the world. Namely, it is not clear whether companies should be allowed to go public with dual-class shares and, if so, which restrictions (if any) should be imposed. Three primary regulatory models have been adopted to deal with dual-class shares: (i) prohibitions, existing in countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Colombia, or Argentina; (ii) the permissive model adopted in several jurisdictions, including Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands, and particularly the United States; and (iii) the restrictive approach recently implemented in Hong …

Disclosure's Purpose, Hillary A. Sale

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States securities regulatory infrastructure requires disclosure of a wide array of information both by and about covered companies. The basic purpose of the disclosures is to level the playing field – for investors, for issuers, and for the public. Although investor protection is the disclosure goal often touted, this article develops the purposes of disclosure extending beyond investors to issuers and the public. Indeed, the disclosure system is designed to level the playing field for issuers— addressing confidentiality concerns, for example. In addition, the system helps to promote confidence in the markets, which, in turn, enables growth and …

Citizen Capitalism: How A Universal Fund Can Provide Influence And Income To All (2019), Lynn A. Stout, Sergio Gramitto, Tamara Belinfanti

Books

Corporations have a huge influence on the life of every citizen--this book offers a visionary but practical plan to give every citizen a say in how corporations are run while also gaining some supplemental income. It lays out a clear approach that uses the mechanisms of the private market to hold corporations accountable to the public.

This would happen through the creation of what the authors call the Universal Fund, a kind of national, democratic, mega mutual fund. Every American over eighteen would be entitled to a share and would participate in directing its share voting choices. Corporations and wealthy …

Corporate Governance For Sustainability, Andrew Johnston, Jeroen Veldman, Robert G. Eccles, Simon Deakin, Jerry Davis, Marie-Laure Djelic, Katharina Pistor, Blanche Segrestin, William M. Gentry, Cynthia A. Williams, David Millon, Paddy Ireland, Beate Sjåfjell, Christopher M. Bruner, Lorraine E. Talbot, Hugh Christopher Willmott, Charlotte Villiers, Carol Liao, Bertrand Valiorgue, Jason Glynos, Todd L. Sayre, Bronwen Morgan, Rick Wartzman, Prem Sikka, Filip Gregor, David Carroll Jacobs, Roger Gill, Roger Brown, Vincenzo Bavoso, Neil Lancastle, Julie Matthaei, Scott Taylor, Ulf Larsson-Olaison, Jay Cullen, Alan J. Dignam, Thomas Wuil Joo, Ciarán O'Kelly, Con Keating, Roman Tomasic, Simon Lilley, Kevin Tennent, Keith Robson, Willy Maley, Iris H-Y Chiu, Ewan Mcgaughey, Chris Rees, Nina Boeger, Adam Leaver, Marc T. Moore, Leen Paape, Alan D. Meyer, Marcello Palazzi, Nitasha Kaul, Juan Felipe Espinosa-Cristia, Timothy Kuhn, David J. Cooper, Susanne Soederberg, Andreas Jansson, Susan Watson, Ofer Sitbon, Joan Loughrey, David Collison, Maureen Mcculloch, Navajyoti Samanta, Daniel J.H. Greenwood, Grahame F. Thompson, Andrew R. Keay, Alessia Contu, Andreas Rühmkorf, Richard Hull, Irene-Marie Esser, Nihel Chabrak

Faculty Scholarship

The current model of corporate governance needs reform. There is mounting evidence that the practices of shareholder primacy drive company directors and executives to adopt the same short time horizon as financial markets. Pressure to meet the demands of the financial markets drives stock buybacks, excessive dividends and a failure to invest in productive capabilities. The result is a ‘tragedy of the horizon’, with corporations and their shareholders failing to consider environmental, social or even their own, long-term, economic sustainability.

With less than a decade left to address the threat of climate change, and with consensus emerging that businesses need …

The Core Corporate Governance Puzzle: Contextualizing The Link To Performance, Merritt B. Fox, Ronald J. Gilson, Darius Palia

Faculty Scholarship

There is a puzzle at the core of corporate governance theory. Prior scholarship reports a strong relationship between firms best at creating shareholder value and those rated highly by the established corporate governance indices. Little work explores why, however. We hypothesize that the link between governance and performance depends centrally on context. We illustrate the importance of context by exploring circumstances when a firm's governance structure can operate as a signal of the quality of its management. The idea is that better managers are on average more likely to choose a highly rated governance structure than are bad managers because …

The Corporate Purpose Of Social License, Hillary A. Sale

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article deploys the sociological theory of social license, or the acceptance of a business or organization by the relevant communities and stakeholders, in the context of the board of directors and corporate governance. Corporations are generally treated as “private” actors and thus are regulated by “private” corporate law. This construct allows for considerable latitude. Corporate actors are not, however, solely “private.” They are the beneficiaries of economic and political power, and the decisions they make have impacts that extend well beyond the boundaries of the entities they represent.

Using Wells Fargo and Uber as case studies, this Article explores …

Dual-Class Shares In Singapore – Where Ideology Meets Pragmatism, Pey Woan Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article seeks to understand the rationale for and potential implications of the introduction of dual class shares (DCS) in Singapore. It does so by first considering the theoretical as well as evidential arguments for and against the use of DCS, followed by a survey on the reception (or otherwise) of such structures in four common law jurisdictions with vibrant capital markets, viz., Canada, the United States, United Kingdom and Hong Kong. It observes that the chief argument cited by business founders to justify the use of DCS structures is the desire to enhance a firm’s long-term profitability by shielding …

The Law And Finance Of Initial Coin Offerings, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez, Nydia Remolina Leon

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The rise of new technologies is changing the way companies raise funds. Along with the increase of crowdfunding in recent years, the use of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) has emerged more recently as a new form to raise capital. Companies in the United States raised more than $4 billion in 2017 and over $6.3 billion were raised through ICOs in the first three months of 2018. In a typical ICO, a company receives cryptocurrencies in exchange for certain rights embodied in “tokens”, whose nature, treatment and implications are generating controversy among securities regulators around the world.