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Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in Securities Law
Conflicts Of Interest At An Organization’S Highest Authority: How The District Of Columbia’S Rules Of Professional Conduct Can Fail To Protect Private Organizations, Christopher Deubert
Conflicts Of Interest At An Organization’S Highest Authority: How The District Of Columbia’S Rules Of Professional Conduct Can Fail To Protect Private Organizations, Christopher Deubert
Catholic University Law Review
This Article examines how the District of Columbia’s incomplete incorporation of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct into its own Rules of Professional Conduct has created a scenario in which wrongdoing inside a private organization can flourish. In 2002, following the Enron scandal, the American Bar Association (ABA) revisited and revised its Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The ABA nevertheless took a conservative route, rejecting rules long proposed by experts which would have permitted attorneys aware of corporate crimes, fraud, and other wrongdoing to report their concerns to individuals or entities outside the organization’s reporting structure. Additional scandals unfolded contemporaneous …
Requiring Broker-Dealers To Disclose Conflicts Of Interest: A Solution Protecting And Empowering Investors, Daniel P. Guernsey Jr.
Requiring Broker-Dealers To Disclose Conflicts Of Interest: A Solution Protecting And Empowering Investors, Daniel P. Guernsey Jr.
University of Miami Law Review
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (“Dodd-Frank”) instructed the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) to analyze the gaps in the regulatory regimes of investment advisers and broker-dealers. After analyzing the differences between the two regimes, the SEC proposed a rule that essentially created a fiduciary duty for broker-dealers equivalent to that of investment advisers. In theory, a uniform fiduciary duty would increase investor protection; however, such a drastic overhaul of broker-dealer regulation has attendant consequences. Indeed, as seen from the federal government’s previous attempts to create a broker-dealer fiduciary duty, increasing broker-dealer regulatory requirements limits lower-capital …
Third-Party Institutional Proxy Advisors: Conflicts Of Interest And Roads To Reform, Matthew Fagan
Third-Party Institutional Proxy Advisors: Conflicts Of Interest And Roads To Reform, Matthew Fagan
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
With the rise of institutional activist investors in recent decades—including a purported 495 activist campaigns against U.S. corporations in 2016 alone—the role that third-party institutional proxy advisors play in corporate governance has greatly increased. The United States Office of Government Accountability estimates that clients of the top five proxy advisory firms account for about $41.5 trillion in equity throughout the world. For several years, discussions have developed regarding conflicts of interest faced by proxy advisors. For example, Institutional Shareholder Services, the top proxy advisory firm in the world, frequently provides advice to institutional investors on how to vote proxies while …
The Challenge Of Fiduciary Regulation: The Investment Advisors Act After Seventy-Five Years, Roberta S. Karmel
The Challenge Of Fiduciary Regulation: The Investment Advisors Act After Seventy-Five Years, Roberta S. Karmel
Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law
Seventy-five years after its enactment the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 has advanced from a relatively weak statute merely registering advisers with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to a more robust law imposing fiduciary responsibilities on advisers. Over the years, the number of investment advisers and the number of their clients have increased greatly. The SEC therefore has been pressured by Congress to develop a harmonized fiduciary standard for broker-dealers and advisers and also to develop and enforce a greater degree of oversight over the advisory industry. These developments have raised the questions of how to fund such efforts …
Fraud Is Already Illegal: Section 621 Of The Dodd-Frank Act In The Context Of The Securities Laws, Nathan R. Schuur
Fraud Is Already Illegal: Section 621 Of The Dodd-Frank Act In The Context Of The Securities Laws, Nathan R. Schuur
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, lawmakers and the public focused on abuses in the securitization industry. Abacus, a Synthetic CDO created by Goldman Sachs & Co., became a symbol of what many felt was a corrupt system when it became known that Goldman and Fabrice Tourre, a Vice President at its Correlation Trading Desk, had assisted a hedge fund in designing the security to fail. Perceived failings of the securities laws to prevent transactions like Abacus spurred Congress to enact Section 621 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which prohibits conflicts of interest in asset-backed securitizations. But the law is …
Why Governance Might Work In Mutual Funds, Michael C. Schouten
Why Governance Might Work In Mutual Funds, Michael C. Schouten
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The Supreme Court's recent decision in Jones v. Harris Associates L.P. has highlighted the potential for agency conflicts in mutual funds, whose advisors have the de facto power to award themselves high fees. While the surrounding debate has focused on the extent to which market competition replaces the need for fee litigation, there appears to be a growing consensus that fund governance, through the use of voice, is unlikely to be effective. The use of voice is commonly said to be hampered by collective action problems. More recently, scholars have argued that it is further weakened by the easy availability …
Shareholder Passivity Reexamined, Bernard S. Black
Shareholder Passivity Reexamined, Bernard S. Black
Michigan Law Review
This article argues that shareholder monitoring is possible: It's an idea that hasn't been tried, rather than an idea that has failed. I defer to a second article currently in draft the question of whether more monitoring by institutional shareholders is desirable. Will direct shareholder oversight, or indirect oversight through shareholder-nominated directors, improve corporate performance, prove counterproductive, or, perhaps, not matter much one way or the other? What are the benefits and risks in giving money managers - themselves imperfectly monitored agents - more power over corporate managers? If more shareholder voice is desirable, how much more and …
Chinese Wall Or Emperor's New Clothes? Regulating Conflicts Of Interest Of Securities Firms In The U.S. And The U.K., Norman S. Poser
Chinese Wall Or Emperor's New Clothes? Regulating Conflicts Of Interest Of Securities Firms In The U.S. And The U.K., Norman S. Poser
Michigan Journal of International Law
This article has two principal theses. The first is that, while Chinese Walls of securities firms are undoubtedly useful in some instances in preventing the flow of confidential information, the evidence that they actually do this is insufficient to justify basing a legal defense on the existence of a wall in a particular firm. In fact, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that at some firms the Chinese Wall is nothing but a convenient fiction aimed at avoiding liability for market abuses. The article's second thesis is that the isolation of information within a department of a firm which …
The Regulation Of Insider Trading In The United States, United Kingdom, And Japan, Barbara Ann Banoff
The Regulation Of Insider Trading In The United States, United Kingdom, And Japan, Barbara Ann Banoff
Michigan Journal of International Law
Part I of this article will briefly discuss the American laws regulating insider trading; Part II will discuss the law of the United Kingdom; and Part III will discuss the regulation-or, more accurately, the non-regulation-of insider trading in Japan.