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Articles 1 - 30 of 126
Full-Text Articles in Securities Law
Adverse Domination, Statutes Of Limitations And The In Pari Delicto Defense - Application In Cases Involving Claims Of Accounting Malpractice And Corporate Fraud, Laurence A. Steckman Esq., Adam J. Rader Esq.
Adverse Domination, Statutes Of Limitations And The In Pari Delicto Defense - Application In Cases Involving Claims Of Accounting Malpractice And Corporate Fraud, Laurence A. Steckman Esq., Adam J. Rader Esq.
Touro Law Review
No abstract provided.
Merrick Dodd And The Great Depression: A Few Historical Corrections, Charles R. T. O'Kelley
Merrick Dodd And The Great Depression: A Few Historical Corrections, Charles R. T. O'Kelley
Seattle University Law Review
Merrick Dodd is remembered primarily for his role as coprotagonist, with Adolf Berle, in the famous Berle–Dodd debate. Dodd’s contribution to that debate—For Whom are Corporate Managers Trustees?—has generally been interpreted as the inspiration for modern stakeholder theory. Berle’s contribution has generally been viewed as the foundation on which shareholder primacy rests. Both of these views have been clarified by the nuanced work of Bratton and Wachter. Oddly, while scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to Berle’s actual life story, there is almost no scholarship that sheds light on Merrick Dodd, the historical person.
The Elephant In The Room: Helping Delaware Courts Develop Law To End Systemic Short-Term Bias In Corporate Decision-Making, Kenneth Mcneil, Keith Johnson
The Elephant In The Room: Helping Delaware Courts Develop Law To End Systemic Short-Term Bias In Corporate Decision-Making, Kenneth Mcneil, Keith Johnson
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
Short-termism in corporate decision-making is as problematic for long-term investors as relying on a three-mile radar on a supertanker. It is totally inadequate for handling the long-term risks and opportunities faced by the modern corporation. Yet recent empirical research shows that up to 85% of the S&P 1500 have no long-term planning. This is costing pension funds and other long-term investors dearly. For instance, the small minority of companies that do long-term planning and risk management had a long-term profitability that was 81% higher than their peers during the 2001–2014 period—with less stock volatility that costs investors dearly as well. …
Proxy Access Voting: Evaluating Proxy Access And The Recent Phenomenon Of Corporations Adopting Shareholder Protective Policies, Danielle Vukovich
Proxy Access Voting: Evaluating Proxy Access And The Recent Phenomenon Of Corporations Adopting Shareholder Protective Policies, Danielle Vukovich
San Diego International Law Journal
Shareholders hold a financial stake in a corporation, and therefore are often viewed as owners of the corporation and believed to be in control for all corporate actions. However, their powers are circumscribed. Board of directors committees nominate directors to serve the corporation and these directors have the power to select the corporation’s officers. The committees provide shareholders a slate of proposed directors that are voted on and approved at the annual shareholder meeting. Shareholders may also propose their own slate of directors, but this typically requires a proxy contest, which can be expensive due to the costs both associated …
Do Institutional Owners Monitor? Evidence From Voting On Connected Transaction Proposals In Hong Kong-Listed Companies, Félix E. Mezzanotte, Simon Fung
Do Institutional Owners Monitor? Evidence From Voting On Connected Transaction Proposals In Hong Kong-Listed Companies, Félix E. Mezzanotte, Simon Fung
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
The conventional view in Hong Kong has been that institutional owners tend to be passive owners and that they do little to monitor the companies’ management. We investigated whether the presence of institutional owners in Hong Kong-listed companies was associated with greater monitoring of management through dissent voting by hand-collecting information for a sample (n= 96) of connected transaction proposals (“CT proposals”) and of their voting outcomes, as announced in the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong during the period from 2012–14. Our study shows that voting approval rates on CT proposals were lower (i.e. greater dissent voting) when institutional owners …
Keeping Shareholder Activism Alive: A Comparative Approach To Outlawing Dead Hand Proxy Puts In Delaware, Danielle A. Rapaccioli
Keeping Shareholder Activism Alive: A Comparative Approach To Outlawing Dead Hand Proxy Puts In Delaware, Danielle A. Rapaccioli
Fordham Law Review
Current trends in shareholder activism have brought to light the competing interests of management and stockholders. With a rise in shareholder activism, firms are continuing to include change in control provisions, known as proxy puts, in their debt agreements to counter activist success. Recent litigation regarding the use of these provisions has created a debate as to whether these provisions are valid under Delaware law. Moreover, companies and lending institutions have morphed these provisions into a more restrictive form, known as “dead hand proxy puts.” The controversy analyzed in this Note arises out of the use of dead hand proxy …
Agency Theory As Prophecy: How Boards, Analysts, And Fund Managers Perform Their Roles, Jiwook Jung, Frank Dobbin
Agency Theory As Prophecy: How Boards, Analysts, And Fund Managers Perform Their Roles, Jiwook Jung, Frank Dobbin
Seattle University Law Review
In 1976, Michael Jensen and William Meckling published a paper reintroducing agency theory that explained how the modern corporation is structured to serve dispersed shareholders. They purported to describe the world as it exists but, in fact, they described a utopia, and their piece was read as a blueprint for that utopia. We take a page from the sociology of knowledge to argue that, in the modern world, economic theories function as prescriptions for behavior as much as they function as descriptions. Economists and management theorists often act as prophets rather than scientists, describing the world not as it is, …
Dual-Class Capital Structures: A Legal, Theoretical & Empirical Buy-Side Analysis, Christopher C. Mckinnon
Dual-Class Capital Structures: A Legal, Theoretical & Empirical Buy-Side Analysis, Christopher C. Mckinnon
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
“The advantage of a dual-class share structure is that it protects entrepreneurial management from the demands of ordinary shareholders. The disadvantage of a dual-class share structure is that it protects entrepreneurial management from the demands of shareholders.” Issuing dual classes of stock has become hotly debated since two major events transpired in 2014: (1) Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion and (2) Alibaba chose to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) instead of the Hong Kong Exchange. Because dual-class managers, like those at Facebook and Alibaba, retain a controlling voting block, their decisions are immune from …
The Corporation’S Place In Society, Gabriel Rauterberg
The Corporation’S Place In Society, Gabriel Rauterberg
Michigan Law Review
The vast majority of economic activity is now organized through corporations. The public corporation is usurping the state’s role as the most important institution of wealthy capitalist societies. Across the developed world, there is increasing convergence on the shareholder-owned corporation as the primary vehicle for creating wealth. Yet nothing like this degree of convergence has occurred in answering the fundamental questions of corporate capitalism: What role do corporations serve? What is the goal of corporate law? What should corporate managers do? Discussion of these questions is as old as the institutions involved.
Open Sesame: The Myth Of Alibaba's Extreme Corporate Governance And Control, Yu-Hsin Lin, Thomas Mehaffy
Open Sesame: The Myth Of Alibaba's Extreme Corporate Governance And Control, Yu-Hsin Lin, Thomas Mehaffy
Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law
In September 2014, Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Alibaba) successfully launched a $25 billion initial public offering (IPO), the largest IPO ever, on New York Stock Exchange. Alibaba’s IPO success witnessed a wave among Chinese Internet companies to raise capital in U.S capital markets. A significant number of these companies have employed a novel, but poorly understood corporate ownership and control mechanism—the variable interest entity (VIE) structure and/or the disproportional control structure. The VIE structure was created in response to the Chinese restriction on foreign investments; however, it carries the risk of being declared illegal under Chinese law. The disproportional control …
The Sum Of Its Parts: The Lawyer-Client Relationship In Initial Public Offerings, Jeremy R. Mcclane
The Sum Of Its Parts: The Lawyer-Client Relationship In Initial Public Offerings, Jeremy R. Mcclane
Fordham Law Review
This Article examines the impact of the quality of a lawyer's working relationship with his or her client on one of the most important types of capital markets deal in a company's existence: its initial public offering (IPO). Drawing on data from interviews with equity capital markets lawyers at major law firms, and analyzing data from IPOs in the United States registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission between June 1996 and December 2010, this study finds a strong association between several measures of IPO performance and the familiarity between the lead underwriter and its counsel, as measured by the …
A Blended Approach To Reducing The Costs Of Shareholder Litigation, Valian A. Afshar
A Blended Approach To Reducing The Costs Of Shareholder Litigation, Valian A. Afshar
Michigan Law Review
Multiforum litigation and federal securities law class actions impose heavy costs on corporations and their shareholders without producing proportionate benefits. Both are largely the result of the agency problem between shareholders and their attorneys, driven more by the attorneys’ interests in generating fees than by the interests of their clients. In response to each of these problems, commentators have recommended a number of solutions. Chief among them are forum selection and mandatory arbitration provisions in a corporation’s charter or bylaws. This Note recommends that corporations unilaterally adopt both forum selection and mandatory arbitration bylaws to address shareholder lawsuits under state …
The Jobs Act Trojan Horse: A Gift To Startups With Something Else Inside?, Erik Gordon
The Jobs Act Trojan Horse: A Gift To Startups With Something Else Inside?, Erik Gordon
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
This Comment will analyze which provisions of the Act are consistent with the purpose that sponsors would have the public believe, that emphasized by the name “JOBS Act,” and distinguish them from those provisions that serve as menacing soldiers hidden under the cover of a name that diverts attention from the Act’s true purpose.
Legally "Strong" Shareholders Of Japan, Gen Goto
Legally "Strong" Shareholders Of Japan, Gen Goto
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
Foreign investors often criticize Japanese corporations for not paying enough attention to the interests of their shareholders. It might surprise these critics, then, to learn that shareholders’ legal rights under the Japanese Companies Act are actually quite strong. Indeed, many of the rights that shareholders’ rights advocates often support, including shareholders’ power to alter a corporate charter without board consent, shareholders’ power to control dividend payments, majority voting for board elections, shareholders’ power to replace the board of directors, and shareholder access to a corporate ballot—all of which are strongly debated elsewhere— are already effective in Japan. Moreover, derivative suits …
Insider Trading And Other Securities Frauds In The United States: Lessons For Chile, Dante Figueroa
Insider Trading And Other Securities Frauds In The United States: Lessons For Chile, Dante Figueroa
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
This Article is a comparative analysis of insider trading law in the United States and Chile. The study summarily reviews the historical, political, and legal foundations of insider trading regulation in both jurisdictions, identifying areas of convergence, as well as areas in which the Chilean securities market could benefit vis- ` a-vis the more advanced experience of the considerably larger American securities market. The Article also highlights the axiological closeness between both jurisdictions concerning the protection of inside corporate information and the fiduciary role of those who intervene in securities markets in their various capacities (as investors, shareholders, corporate officers, …
From Revolutionary To Palace Guard: The Role And Requirements Of Intermediaries Under Proposed Regulation Crowdfunding, Andrew D. Stephenson, Brian R. Knight, Matthew Bahleda
From Revolutionary To Palace Guard: The Role And Requirements Of Intermediaries Under Proposed Regulation Crowdfunding, Andrew D. Stephenson, Brian R. Knight, Matthew Bahleda
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
Intermediaries in securities crowdfunding face significant requirements as a result of the statutory mandates of Title III of the JOBS Act. The SEC, in its proposed rules, provided structure to these requirements. The proposed rules would create strict requirements for intermediaries regarding their relationships with investors and how they undertake crowdfunding transactions under Section 4(a)(6) of the Securities Act. The proposed rules would also create and establish the guidelines for funding portals, a new type of limited purpose securities broker. While some commentators decry the SEC for placing undue burdens and legal liabilities on intermediaries in securities crowdfunding, the SEC …
Who Wants To Watch? A Comment On The New International Paradigm Of Financial Consumer Market Regulation, Toni Williams
Who Wants To Watch? A Comment On The New International Paradigm Of Financial Consumer Market Regulation, Toni Williams
Seattle University Law Review
This Article explores the capacity of the G20’s model of financial consumer protection to reconfigure relationships between financial firms and consumers, focusing in particular on the market conduct of financial firms. Although this Article does not focus directly on Adolf A. Berle’s work, it does engage with some of his enduring concerns about economic relations between corporations, regulators, and individuals; the socialcontext of those economic relations; and the role of law and legal regulation in shaping market relations. More specifically, this Article considers new international regulatory principles related to corporate social responsibility— a recurring theme of Berle’s work11—in the somewhat …
Dinner Parties During “Lost Decades”: On The Difficulties Of Rethinking Financial Markets, Fostering Elite Consensus, And Renewing Political Economy, David A. Westbrook
Dinner Parties During “Lost Decades”: On The Difficulties Of Rethinking Financial Markets, Fostering Elite Consensus, And Renewing Political Economy, David A. Westbrook
Seattle University Law Review
This Article addresses two groups of problems that ought to be understood in relation to one another. This Article has three movements. In Part II, I discuss conceptual obstacles to forming the new elite consensus that rethinking the role of financial markets requires. To produce policy reform, it is not enough to have new ideas; the ideas must be understood, adopted, and acted upon by people. Policy reform is thus always a function of conversations. In Part III, I discuss some possible ways the elite consensus might be formed. In Part V, the conclusion, I offer a preliminary assessment of …
On The Rise Of Shareholder Primacy, Signs Of Its Fall, And The Return Of Managerialism (In The Closet), Lynn A. Stout
On The Rise Of Shareholder Primacy, Signs Of Its Fall, And The Return Of Managerialism (In The Closet), Lynn A. Stout
Seattle University Law Review
In their 1932 opus "The Modern Corporation and Public Property," Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means famously documented the evolution of a new economic entity—the public corporation. What made the public corporation “public,” of course, was that it had thousands or even hundreds of thousands of shareholders, none of whom owned more than a small fraction of outstanding shares. As a result, the public firm’s shareholders had little individual incentive to pay close attention to what was going on inside the firm, or even to vote. Dispersed shareholders were rationally apathetic. If they voted at all, they usually voted to approve …
Rebalancing Private Placement Regulation, William K. Sjostrom, Jr.
Rebalancing Private Placement Regulation, William K. Sjostrom, Jr.
Seattle University Law Review
Regulating securities offerings entails balancing investor protection and capital formation. Inevitably, this balance gets upset. As financial markets evolve, Congress passes new legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopts new rules, and the courts issue unanticipated opinions. These events upset the balance because they happen in an uncoordinated and haphazard manner and oftentimes produce unintended consequences.The Article proceeds as follows. To set the stage, Part II provides background on the Securities Act and describes the differences between public offerings and private placements. Part III explains why rebalancing private placement regulation may be warranted. Part IV offers proposed statutory language …
Equity Derivatives And The Challenge For Berle’S Conception Of Corporate Accountability, Janis Sarra
Equity Derivatives And The Challenge For Berle’S Conception Of Corporate Accountability, Janis Sarra
Seattle University Law Review
With the proliferation of equity derivatives and related structured financial products, the North American conception of corporate governance faces a new and distinct challenge to its underlying premises.This Article analyzes these developments with a focus on the implications for director and officer accountability and corporate sustainability, using the occasion of the third symposium of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law & Society to consider whether Berle’s analysis of corporate accountability offers any insights into how to address the uncoupling of economic interest and legal rights in corporate governance. Part II of this Article sets the context for …
Hedge Funds And Risk Decoupling: The Empty Voting Problem In The European Union, Wolf-Georg Ringe
Hedge Funds And Risk Decoupling: The Empty Voting Problem In The European Union, Wolf-Georg Ringe
Seattle University Law Review
The law must remain adaptive and responsive to the constantly changing challenges of our society and our business life. One of the most pressing challenges of the past years is the emergence of alternative investment funds, in particular hedge funds, which masterfully exploit the traditional categories of corporate law, financial derivatives, and risk management. This Article is only concerned with the first of these two forms— negative decoupling.9 It looks at the various forms of negative riskdecoupling strategies and tries to shed light on their overall desirability. Three distinct theoretical perspectives are used as an analytical framework to examine the …
Revisiting “Truth In Securities” Revisited: Abolishing Ipos And Harnessing Private Markets In The Public Good, A. C. Pritchard
Revisiting “Truth In Securities” Revisited: Abolishing Ipos And Harnessing Private Markets In The Public Good, A. C. Pritchard
Seattle University Law Review
This article's focus is the idea that the transition between private- and public company status could be less bumpy if we unify the public–private dividing line under the Securities Act and Exchange Act. Part II of this article outlines the current public–private dividing lines under the Securities Act and the Exchange Act. This part also explores Facebook’s recent transition from private to public status under that framework, as well as Congress’s recent intervention in the field with the JOBS Act. Part III explores the problems of making the transition from private to public, focusing on IPOs and their role in …
Corporate Governance As A School Of Social Reform, Ciarán O’Kelly
Corporate Governance As A School Of Social Reform, Ciarán O’Kelly
Seattle University Law Review
In this paper, I present a vision of the corporation as a moral person. I point to “the separation of ownership and control” as a moment when the corporation broke away from the moral lives of ownermanagers. I then draw out the manner in which we can speak of the company as a moral person. Finally, through a discussion of social reporting in two British banks, I point to a shift in how this moral personhood is articulated, with the rise of corporate governance—or doing business well—as its own foundation of corporate responsibility. I propose a view of corporate responsibility …
The Common Link In Failures And Scandals At The World’S Leading Banks, Justin O’Brien, Olivia Dixon
The Common Link In Failures And Scandals At The World’S Leading Banks, Justin O’Brien, Olivia Dixon
Seattle University Law Review
This Article argues that both the root cause of the crisis and the route to restoring trust and confidence is to be found in ascertaining how to regulate culture across mandates, processes, and use of discretion. Part II identifies the internal and external failings of four of the most recent global banking scandals within the CEDAR matrix. Part III discusses the regulatory challenges faced when compliance serves no practical function and the consequent material risk to market integrity. This Article concludes by suggesting that it is unsustainable for regulation to be decided, implemented, and monitored at a national level. Global …
Shareholder Social Responsibility, David Millon
Shareholder Social Responsibility, David Millon
Seattle University Law Review
Amidst concerns about the negative effects on long-run value and competitiveness, one overlooked consequence of short-termism is its impediment to corporate social responsibility (CSR).In this Article, Part II examines the short-termism phenomenon, first from the point of view of investors and then from that of corporate managers, and summarizes widely held views about the social costs of short-termism. Part III then shifts the focus to the impact of shorttermism on CSR, a problem that has been largely overlooked, and develops two theories or models of CSR: the “ethical” and the “strategic.” Part III also explains how short-termism presents a significant …
The Financialization Of The U.S. Corporation: What Has Been Lost, And How It Can Be Regained, William Lazonick
The Financialization Of The U.S. Corporation: What Has Been Lost, And How It Can Be Regained, William Lazonick
Seattle University Law Review
As the U.S. economy struggles to recover from the Great Recession, the erosion of middle-class jobs and the explosion of income inequality have endured long enough to raise serious questions about whether the U.S. economy is beset by deep structural problems. My argument is that the employment problem that the United States now faces is largely structural. But the structural problem is not a labormarket mismatch between the skills that prospective employers want and the skills that potential workers have, as many economists have argued. Nor is the problem automation. Rather, the employment problem stems from changes in the ways …
The Modern Corporation Magnified: Managerial Accountability In Financial-Services Holding Companies, Anita K. Krug
The Modern Corporation Magnified: Managerial Accountability In Financial-Services Holding Companies, Anita K. Krug
Seattle University Law Review
This Article first recalls the primary contours of Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’s acclaimed observations regarding the separation of ownership and control in the “modern corporation,” as well as their conclusions about the implications of those observations for the doctrine of shareholder primacy. Second, the Article describes how the activities of FSHCs generally differ from what we think corporations do and, certainly, from what Berle and Means conceived of as the purpose of corporations or, indeed, any business enterprise. Third, this Article articulates how those business activities render more acute the problem of the separation of ownership and control that …
Toward A More Resilient Financial System?, Joanna Gray
Toward A More Resilient Financial System?, Joanna Gray
Seattle University Law Review
The concept of “resilience” in the context of financial systems calls for closer analysis, as most of the current efforts to reshape financial systems seek to render them more resilient. Resilience has become a necessary complement to the paradigm shift taking place in global financial regulation toward “macroprudential” regulation—a term used to describe a new viewing platform and decisionmaking plane for financial regulation. From this new perspective, regulators can address the state of the financial system as a whole, as well as its component parts. This Article seeks to illustrate how legal and regulatory measures that foster resilience have become …
Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo
Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo
Seattle University Law Review
During the last financial crisis, what should the Federal Reserve (the Fed) have done when lenders stopped making loans, even to borrowers with sterling credit and strong collateral? Because the central bank is the last resort for funding, the conventional answer had been to lend freely at a penalty rate against good collateral, as Walter Bagehot suggested in 1873 about the Bank of England. Acting thus as a lender of last resort, the central bank will keep solvent banks liquid but let insolvent banks go out of business, as they should. The Fed tried this, but when the conventional wisdom …