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Securities Law Commons

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Selected Works

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2015

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Institution
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Articles 1 - 30 of 55

Full-Text Articles in Securities Law

Locked In: The Competitive Disadvantage Of Citizen Shareholders, Anne M. Tucker Nov 2015

Locked In: The Competitive Disadvantage Of Citizen Shareholders, Anne M. Tucker

Anne Tucker

In this Essay, I challenge the conventional corporate law wisdom that unhappy mutual fund investors paying high fees don’t need litigation or regulation to protect their interests because they should simply exit a fund and reinvest elsewhere. The exit solution, advanced by Professors John Morley and Quinn Curtis in Taking Exit Rights Seriously provided an elegantly simply solution to the problem of unhappy indirect investors (e.g., mutual fund investors) given that they are often low-dollar, low-incentive, rationally-apathetic investors facing enormous information asymmetries and collective action problems. According to their view, competition produced by exit, or the threat of exit, is …


Lawyers And Fools: Lawyer-Directors In Public Corporations, Lubomir P. Litov, Simone M. Sepe, Charles K. Whitehead Oct 2015

Lawyers And Fools: Lawyer-Directors In Public Corporations, Lubomir P. Litov, Simone M. Sepe, Charles K. Whitehead

Lubomir P. Litov

The accepted wisdom—that a lawyer who becomes a corporate director has a fool for a client—is outdated. The benefits of lawyer-directors in today’s world significantly outweigh the costs. Beyond monitoring, they help manage litigation and regulation, as well as structure compensation to align CEO and shareholder interests. The results have been an average 9.5% increase in firm value and an almost doubling in the percentage of public companies with lawyer-directors. This Article is the first to analyze the rise of lawyer-directors. It makes a variety of other empirical contributions, each of which is statistically significant and large in magnitude. First, …


Don’T Ask, Just Tell: Insider Trading After United States V. O’Hagan, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Richard W. Painter, Cynthia A. Williams Oct 2015

Don’T Ask, Just Tell: Insider Trading After United States V. O’Hagan, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Richard W. Painter, Cynthia A. Williams

Cynthia A. Williams

The United States Supreme Court validated the misappropriation theory in United States v. O'Hagan, but unfortunately rendered a confusing opinion that left many questions unresolved. In this article we discuss the history of the Supreme Court's Section 10(b) jurisprudence as it relates to insider trading, giving particular attention to the Court's insistence prior to O'Hagan that "a material misrepresentation or material failure to disclose," not merely a breach of fiduciary duty, must exist to impose liability under Section 10(b). We then discuss the pervasive inconsistencies among lower courts in interpreting the misappropriation theory, and how the O'Hagan decision does little …


Developments In Financial Services Regulation: A Canadian Perspective, Poonam Puri, Andrew Nichol Oct 2015

Developments In Financial Services Regulation: A Canadian Perspective, Poonam Puri, Andrew Nichol

Poonam Puri

No abstract provided.


High Tech Lending: Maintaining Priority In An Intangible World, Richard Haigh, Marc R. Mercier Oct 2015

High Tech Lending: Maintaining Priority In An Intangible World, Richard Haigh, Marc R. Mercier

Richard Haigh

Financing intangible intellectual property in Canada presents some novel demands on lenders because of the interaction of provincial security schemes with federal intellectual property legislation. This article looks at the relative ease with which security interests in intangible property may be obtained under provincial personal property security regimes, and then at the various federal intellectual property statutes which exhibit more of a piecemeal approach to financing. In addition, a number of constitutional issues arise because of this jurisdictional split, and the article explores these issues, comparing the situation in Canada with that in the United States. The article suggests that …


Weather, Leather, And The Obligation To Disclose: Kerr V. Danier Leather Inc., Anita Anand, Mary Condon Oct 2015

Weather, Leather, And The Obligation To Disclose: Kerr V. Danier Leather Inc., Anita Anand, Mary Condon

Mary G. Condon

Is an issuer legally obliged to update its prospectus if a material event occurs following the receipt for the prospectus but prior to the closing of the offering? This is the crucial issue that is addressed in Kerr v. Danier Leather Inc., a case that has been heard at the trial and appeal levels in Ontario and that will be heard in 2007 by the Supreme Court of Canada. In this commentary, we argue that the Court of Appeal decision in the case overlooked crucial aspects of contemporary securities law and policy in holding that there is no obligation to …


Tax Treatment Of Derivative Instruments, Oluwaseun Viyon Ojo Oct 2015

Tax Treatment Of Derivative Instruments, Oluwaseun Viyon Ojo

Oluwaseun Viyon Ojo

The article provides an analysis of the various types of derivative instruments traded on the capital markets. As derivative instruments become frequently tradable in the Nigerian Financial market in the near projected future, it is expedient that the concerned companies plan adequately for the tax implications of such transactions and the appropriate tax authorities know how to treat the instrument of derivatives for the purpose of imposition of relevant taxes. This paper therefore dealt with the treatment of these instruments under the Capital Gains Tax Act (CGTA) and Companies Income Tax Act (CITA), though there are no specific rules for …


Four Pillars To Build A New Corporate Law Federalism: Crowd Funding Exchanges, A Codified Internal Affairs Doctrine, City-Based Incorporation, And An Arbitrated Corporate Code, J.W. Verret Sep 2015

Four Pillars To Build A New Corporate Law Federalism: Crowd Funding Exchanges, A Codified Internal Affairs Doctrine, City-Based Incorporation, And An Arbitrated Corporate Code, J.W. Verret

John W Verret

This article examines the event window opened by the pending creation of new crowdfunding platforms, a new means of creating publicly traded equity for smaller, early stage firms than have ever been permitted by the Securities and Exchange Commission to access the public securities markets. That event window could support a completely new paradigm for the development of corporation law and completely upend existing wisdom about interstate competition to develop corporate governance. This article considers the economics of crowdfunding precursors which share some of the attributes of equity crowdfunding, and also considers the expected attributes of equity crowdfunding, to demonstrate …


Reconciling Tax Law And Securities Regulation, Omri Y. Marian Aug 2015

Reconciling Tax Law And Securities Regulation, Omri Y. Marian

Omri Y Marian

Issuers in registered securities offerings must disclose the expected tax consequences to investors investing in the offered securities (“nonfinancial tax disclosure”). This Article advances three arguments regarding nonfinancial tax disclosures. First, nonfinancial tax disclosure practice, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) has sanctioned it, does not fulfill its intended regulatory purposes. Currently, nonfinancial tax disclosures provide irrelevant information, sometimes fail to provide material information, create unnecessary transaction costs, and divert valuable administrative resources to the enforcement of largely-meaningless requirements. Second, the practical reason for this failure is the SEC and tax practitioners’ unsuccessful attempt to address investors’ heterogeneous …


Choosing Among Innocents: Should Donations To Charities Be Protected From Avoidance As Fraudulent Transfers, Jeffrey Davis Aug 2015

Choosing Among Innocents: Should Donations To Charities Be Protected From Avoidance As Fraudulent Transfers, Jeffrey Davis

Jeffrey Davis

In recent years, the nation has experienced the most severe recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. A recession is like a low tide. When the water recedes, the crabs, slugs, and urchins appear. Similarly, when the economy recedes, Ponzi schemes appear. People cut back on saving and investing, and many are forced to draw on savings and investments. Deprived of its life's blood, a positive cash flow, a Ponzi scheme dies. This explains why so many Ponzi schemes have failed recently, including the schemes of Bernard Madoff in New York, Tom Petters in Minneapolis, Robert Allen Stanford in …


Tender Offers And The Sale Of Control: An Analogue To Determine The Validity Of Target Management Defense Measures, Stuart R. Cohn Aug 2015

Tender Offers And The Sale Of Control: An Analogue To Determine The Validity Of Target Management Defense Measures, Stuart R. Cohn

Stuart R. Cohn

The hostile tender offer phenomenon has spawned wholesale defensive measures adopted by target company management. In recent years, confrontations like those of Occidental Petroleum-Mead Corporation and American Express-McGraw-Hill have resulted in target management causing the eventual withdrawal of the tender offer by employing a variety of defensive measures known colloquially as “scorched earth” tactics. The “urge to merge” among major corporations will continue to produce unsolicited, nonnegotiated tender offers at varying scales of size. Consequently, strategies and techniques have been created at a pace faster than the process of litigation, causing a discernible lag between the ingenuity of corporate management …


Stock Appreciation Rights And The Sec: A Case Of Questionable Rulemaking, Stuart R. Cohn Aug 2015

Stock Appreciation Rights And The Sec: A Case Of Questionable Rulemaking, Stuart R. Cohn

Stuart R. Cohn

A stock appreciation rights (SARs) program is a form of deferred incentive compensation. Grantees are awarded SAR-units representing an equal number of the grantor’s equity shares currently being traded in public markets. SARs provide grantees the benefit of stock ownership without equity interest, investment, or risk of loss. Stock appreciation rights programs offer various advantages over other forms of executive compensation and have grown rapidly in number. These advantages include the availability of benefits without the requirement of monetary payments, the utilization of SARs as an interest-free form of financing the purchase of stock under tandem stock option programs, the …


Securities Markets For Small Issuers: The Barrier Of Federal Solicitation And Advertising Prohibitions, Stuart R. Cohn Aug 2015

Securities Markets For Small Issuers: The Barrier Of Federal Solicitation And Advertising Prohibitions, Stuart R. Cohn

Stuart R. Cohn

How can small issuers find potential investors and stay within the confines of federal securities laws? That is a perplexing question given the very strong prohibitions against advertising and solicitation found in SEC rules and no-action letters. What the registration exemptions purport to give with one hand, i.e. ability to raise capital without the cost and delay of registration, the anti-solicitation rules take away with the other. These rules need to be lifted or modified if small businesses are to have a viable opportunity to seek potential investors.


Demise Of The Director's Duty Of Care: Judicial Avoidance Of Standards And Sanctions Through The Business Judgment Rule, Stuart R. Cohn Aug 2015

Demise Of The Director's Duty Of Care: Judicial Avoidance Of Standards And Sanctions Through The Business Judgment Rule, Stuart R. Cohn

Stuart R. Cohn

Courts love the so-called business judgment rule. It dispenses quickly and easily with derivative actions against corporate directors and officers, and other challenges to corporate conduct. Unfortunately, the business judgment rule has come to mask its underlying premise, i.e. that there must have been a business judgment made. This article examines the dominance of the business judgment rule over the underlying requirement of the duty of care and suggests reform measures that will bring the duty of care back to its appropriate role in determining the merits of management decision-making processes.


The Impact Of Securities Laws On Developing Companies: Would The Wright Brothers Have Gotten Off The Ground?, Stuart R. Cohn Aug 2015

The Impact Of Securities Laws On Developing Companies: Would The Wright Brothers Have Gotten Off The Ground?, Stuart R. Cohn

Stuart R. Cohn

Suppose the Wright brothers, to pursue their dreams of manned flight, needed outside financing. Confronted with the intimidating regulatory requirements of today 's state and federal securities laws, would they ever have gotten off the ground? With historical illustrations, this Essay presents an entertaining look at the serious problems that would be encountered today by entrepreneurs who have ideas but need capital to develop them. It analyzes the regulatory maze and prohibitions of state and federal securities laws and concludes that, in today's marketplace, the Wright brothers probably would have violated several laws to obtain essential financing for their venture.


E-Commerce, Cyber, And Electronic Payment System Risks: Lessons From Paypal, Lawrence J. Trautman Aug 2015

E-Commerce, Cyber, And Electronic Payment System Risks: Lessons From Paypal, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

By now, almost without exception, every business has an internet presence, and is likely engaged in e-commerce. What are the major risks perceived by those engaged in e-commerce and electronic payment systems? What potential risks, if they become reality, may cause substantial increases in operating costs or threaten the very survival of the enterprise? This article utilizes the relevant annual report disclosures from eBay (parent of PayPal), along with other eBay and PayPal documents, as a potentially powerful teaching device. Most of the descriptive language to follow is excerpted directly from eBay’s regulatory filings. My additions include weaving these materials …


Ice Skating Up Hill: Constitutional Challenges To Sec Administrative Proceedings, Thomas Glassman Aug 2015

Ice Skating Up Hill: Constitutional Challenges To Sec Administrative Proceedings, Thomas Glassman

Thomas S Glassman

Since the inception of the Dodd-Frank Act the Securities and Exchange Commission has come under fire for its increased use of administrative proceedings in adjudicating the agency’s enforcement actions. That criticism has come to several suits in federal court claiming constitutional challenges to the system generally and most recently, the Administrative Law Judges themselves. Until June of 2015, when Hill v. the SEC took place in federal court, the Government was unbeaten in when arguing against these constitutional challenges. Hill, however found that it was likely the SEC had hired their Administrative Law Judges unconstitutionally. The SEC Administrative Law Judges …


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 …


Supreme Court’S Decision In Fifth Third Bancorp V. Dudenhoeffer Introduces New Standards For Erisa Fiduciaries, Barry R. Temkin, Kate E. Digeronimo Aug 2015

Supreme Court’S Decision In Fifth Third Bancorp V. Dudenhoeffer Introduces New Standards For Erisa Fiduciaries, Barry R. Temkin, Kate E. Digeronimo

Barry R. Temkin

In its 2014 decision in Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer et al., the U.S. Supreme Court held that fiduciaries of plans that hold publicly traded company stock are subject to the same duty of prudence that applies to fiduciaries in general under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”). In doing so, the Supreme Court effectively rejected decades of law applied by nearly all the Courts of Appeals affording fiduciaries of company stock plans a special “presumption of prudence” not available to the fiduciaries of other varieties of ERISA plans. In place of the presumption of prudence, the …


The Significance And Impact Of Price Distortion And The Fraud-On-The-Market Theory After Halliburton Ii, Charles W. Murdock Jul 2015

The Significance And Impact Of Price Distortion And The Fraud-On-The-Market Theory After Halliburton Ii, Charles W. Murdock

Charles W. Murdock

This past summer, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in Halliburton v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. (“Halliburton II”), in which the Court held that a defendant may establish lack of price impact at the certification stage to establish a lack of reliance based upon the fraud-on-the-market theory. This was the third decision in three years dealing with the fraud-on-the-market approach to establishing commonality with respect to reliance by plaintiffs on management’s misrepresentations. In so doing, the Supreme Court retained market efficiency as an element of the fraud-on-the-market theory, but also reflected a broader and less restrictive …


Rodrigo’S Abstraction: Capitalism Inequality & Reform Over Time And Space, Steven A. Ramirez Jul 2015

Rodrigo’S Abstraction: Capitalism Inequality & Reform Over Time And Space, Steven A. Ramirez

Steven A. Ramirez

No abstract provided.


Regulatory Arbitrage, Extraterritorial Jurisdiction, And Dodd-Frank: The Implications Of Us Global Otc Derivative Regulation, Christian Johnson Jul 2015

Regulatory Arbitrage, Extraterritorial Jurisdiction, And Dodd-Frank: The Implications Of Us Global Otc Derivative Regulation, Christian Johnson

Christian A. Johnson

No abstract provided.


Assessing A Decade Of Interstate Bank Branching, Christian A. Johnson, Tara Rice, Ph. D. Jul 2015

Assessing A Decade Of Interstate Bank Branching, Christian A. Johnson, Tara Rice, Ph. D.

Christian A. Johnson

Since its inception, US. banking regulation has effectively prohibited a bank from opening or owning a branch located outside of its home state, commonly referred to as interstate branching. Only since the passage of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act (IBBEA) of 1994 have banks been able to engage in interstate branching, albeit still subject to significant state restrictions. Despite IBBEA 's removal of those barriers, it still allowed the states to impose anticompetitive restrictions governing the entry of out-of-state banks through the establishment of branch offices. As a result, states that were opposed to entry used IBBEA …


The Dodd-Frank Act's Specialized Corporate Disclosure: Using The Securities Laws To Address Public Policy Issues, David M. Lynn Jun 2015

The Dodd-Frank Act's Specialized Corporate Disclosure: Using The Securities Laws To Address Public Policy Issues, David M. Lynn

David Lynn

No abstract provided.


The Macroprudential Turn: From Institutional 'Safety And Soundness' To Systematic 'Financial Stability' In Financial Supervision, Robert C. Hockett Jun 2015

The Macroprudential Turn: From Institutional 'Safety And Soundness' To Systematic 'Financial Stability' In Financial Supervision, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Since the global financial dramas of 2008-09, authorities on financial regulation have come increasingly to counsel the inclusion of macroprudential policy instruments in the standard ‘toolkit’ of finance-regulatory measures employed by financial supervisors. The hallmark of this perspective is its focus not simply on the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions, as is characteristic of the traditional ‘microprudential’ perspective, but also on certain structural features of financial systems that can imperil such systems as wholes. Systemic ‘financial stability’ thus comes to supplement, though not to supplant, institutional ‘safety and soundness’ as a regulatory desideratum. The move from primarily micro- …


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.


Plausible Cause: Exploring The Limits Of Loss Causation In Pleading And Proving Market Fraud Claims Under Securities Exchange Act Section 10(B) And Sec Rule 10b-5, Robert N. Rapp May 2015

Plausible Cause: Exploring The Limits Of Loss Causation In Pleading And Proving Market Fraud Claims Under Securities Exchange Act Section 10(B) And Sec Rule 10b-5, Robert N. Rapp

Robert N Rapp

This article explores the critical role of loss causation in pleading and proving fraud-on-the-market claims in private actions under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and SEC Rule 10b-5 thereunder. Loss causation is a separate, essential, element of any private action under these provisions, and weighs heavily on securities fraud class actions brought under the fraud-on-the-market theory. Claims in these cases are based on a security market price said to be made artificial by reason of materially false or misleading information disseminated into an efficient market, and which resets to a correct level when a disclosure event …


Halliburton, Basic, And Fraud On The Market: The Need For A New Paradigm, Charles W. Murdock Apr 2015

Halliburton, Basic, And Fraud On The Market: The Need For A New Paradigm, Charles W. Murdock

Charles W. Murdock

No abstract provided.


The Law And Ethics Of High-Frequency Trading, Steven R. Mcnamara Mar 2015

The Law And Ethics Of High-Frequency Trading, Steven R. Mcnamara

Steven R. McNamara

Michael Lewis’s recent book Flash Boys has resurrected the controversy concerning “high-frequency trading” (HFT) in the stock markets. While HFT has been important in the stock markets for about a decade, and may have already peaked in terms of its economic significance, it touched a nerve with a public suspicious of financial institutions in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008-2009. In reality, HFT is not one thing, but a wide array of practices conducted by technologically adept electronic traders. Some of these practices are benign, and some even bring benefits such as liquidity and improved price discovery to …


Understanding Price-Based Antidilution Protection: Five Principles To Apply When Negotiating A Down-Round Financing, Robert P. Bartlett Mar 2015

Understanding Price-Based Antidilution Protection: Five Principles To Apply When Negotiating A Down-Round Financing, Robert P. Bartlett

Robert Bartlett

As most venture capital investors are aware, the economic downturn of the past two years—and the concomitant decrease in private company valuations—has created an opportunity for significant returns on new venture investments seldom seen since the early 1990s. Yet while the investment opportunities of the current economic environment may have attractive financial valuations, they frequently come with the added cost of significant transactional complexity. In particular, the issuance of securities by a private company at a price that is below the price previously paid by the company's investors (typically referred to as a “down-round” financing) may trigger one or more …