Securities Law Commons^™

Brave New World?: The Impact(S) Of The Internet On Modern Securities Regulation, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

It is now a trite commonplace that the advent of the Internet will in time revolutionize securities regulation. Merely the facts that the Internet has somewhere between thirty and sixty million users worldwide today (with an estimated ten to thirty million in the United States) and that some 800,000 U.S. investors already have online brokerage accounts establish that there is a potential global market that can be accessed at very low cost. But the magnitude of the market says little about what will be the character and effect of this approaching revolution.

Technological change is not a new phenomenon for …

Competition Versus Consolidation: The Significance Of Organizational Structure In Financial And Securities Regulation, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

It's as predictable as the swallows' return to Capistrano. At the outset of each new Administration, a Presidential Task Force proposes a restructuring of the federal administrative agencies. New developments in rapidly evolving markets, it is argued, require a consolidation of agencies to generate a broader perspective, to create a "level playing field," and to end the possibility of a "race to the bottom" (to the extent that market participants can opt for one regulatory system over another). The proposal draws little overt criticism, but turf-conscious agencies quietly mobilize their constituencies to oppose the reform. The first sign of trouble …

Delaware's Intermediate Standard For Defensive Tactics: Is There Substance To Proportionality Review?, Ronald J. Gilson, Reinier Kraakman

Faculty Scholarship

The courts have long struggled with a standard for reviewing management's efforts to deter or defeat hostile takeovers. The usual standards of review in corporate law, the business judgment rule and the intrinsic fairness test, do not seem adequate when courts must evaluate defensive measures that implicate both management's business acumen and its loyalty to shareholder interests. Because evaluating a sale of the company is a complex business decision, management's response to a takeover bid resembles the normal business decisions that the business judgment rule largely insulates from judicial review.At the same time, however, a hostile takeover creates a potential …