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Full-Text Articles in Securities Law
The Future Of Disclosure: Esg, Common Ownership, And Systematic Risk, John C. Coffee Jr.
The Future Of Disclosure: Esg, Common Ownership, And Systematic Risk, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
The U.S. securities markets have recently undergone (or are undergoing) three fundamental transitions: (1) institutionalization (with the result that institutional investors now dominate both trading and stock ownership); (2) extraordinary ownership concentration (with the consequence that the three largest U.S. institutional investors now hold 20% and vote 25% of the shares in S&P 500 companies); and (3) the introduction of ESG disclosures (which process has been driven in the U.S. by pressure from large institutional investors). In light of these transitions, how should disclosure policy change? Do institutions and retail investors have the same or different disclosure needs? Why are …
Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls: Fiduciary Duties In Venture Capital Backed Startups, Sarath Sanga, Eric L. Talley
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 …
Fee-Shifting Bylaw And Charter Provisions: Can They Apply In Federal Court? – The Case For Preemption, John C. Coffee Jr.
Fee-Shifting Bylaw And Charter Provisions: Can They Apply In Federal Court? – The Case For Preemption, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
In the first months after a decision of the Delaware Supreme Court upholding a fee-shifting bylaw under which the unsuccessful plaintiff shareholder was required to reimburse all defendants for their legal and other expenses in the litigation, some 24 public companies adopted a similar provision – either by means of a board-adopted bylaw or by placing such a provision in their certificate of incorporation (in the case of companies undergoing an IPO). In effect, private ordering is introducing a one-sided version of the “loser pays” rules. Indeed, as drafted, these provisions typically require a plaintiff who is not completely successful …
Enhancing Investor Protection And The Regulation Of Securities Markets, John C. Coffee Jr.
Enhancing Investor Protection And The Regulation Of Securities Markets, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
This is the congressional testimony of Professor John C. Coffee, Jr., before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, March 10, 2009.
Corporate Governance, Executive Compensation And Securities Litigation, Eric L. Talley, Gudrun Johnsen
Corporate Governance, Executive Compensation And Securities Litigation, Eric L. Talley, Gudrun Johnsen
Faculty Scholarship
It is generally accepted that good corporate governance, executive compensation and the threat of litigation are all important mechanisms for incentivizing managers of public corporations. While there are significant and robust literatures analyzing each of these policy instruments in isolation, their mutual relationship and interaction has received somewhat less attention. Such neglect is mildly surprising in light of a strong intuition that the three devices are structurally related to one another (either as complements or substitutes). In this paper, we construct an agency cost model of the firm in which corporate governance protections, executive compensation levels, and litigation incentives are …
Convergence And Its Critics: What Are The Preconditions To The Separation Of Ownership And Control?, John C. Coffee Jr.
Convergence And Its Critics: What Are The Preconditions To The Separation Of Ownership And Control?, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Recent commentary has argued that deep and liquid securities markets and a dispersed shareholder base are unlikely to develop in civil law countries and transitional economies for a variety of reasons, including (1) the absence of adequate legal protections for minority shareholder, (2) the inability of dispersed shareholders to hold control or pay an equivalent control premium to that which a prospective controlling shareholder will pay and (3) the political vulnerability of dispersed shareholder ownership in left-leaning "social democracies." Nonetheless, this article finds that significant movement in the direction of dispersed ownership has occurred and is accelerating across Europe. To …