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Full-Text Articles in Securities Law

The Supreme Court’S Impact On Securities Class Actions: An Empirical Assessment Of Tellabs, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen Choi Aug 2009

The Supreme Court’S Impact On Securities Class Actions: An Empirical Assessment Of Tellabs, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen Choi

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Using a sample of securities fraud class actions filed between 2003 and 2007, we study the impact of a widely-followed Supreme Court decision from that period, Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, Ltd., 551 U.S. 308 (2007). This decision clarified the law with respect to one of the most hotly contested issues in securities litigation: pleading scienter. The Tellabs decision reversed a very lenient Seventh Circuit decision with respect to pleading scienter, but replaced it with a standard that is nonetheless relatively generous to plaintiffs. Looking at opinions resolving motions to dismiss decided before and after that decision, we …


Securities Class Actions Move North: A Doctrinal And Empirical Analysis Of Securities Class Actions In Canada, Adam C. Pritchard, Janis P. Sarra May 2009

Securities Class Actions Move North: A Doctrinal And Empirical Analysis Of Securities Class Actions In Canada, Adam C. Pritchard, Janis P. Sarra

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

A number of Canadian provinces recently have adopted legislation providing shareholders with a claim for secondary market fraud. Although the legislation has some similarities to the “fraud on the market” class action found in the United States, the laws have some important differences. This article compares securities class actions in Canada and the United States, highlighting the differences between the two regimes that are likely to have important strategic consequences for class action attorneys and issuers. The article also collects and analyzes data on the securities class actions that have been filed to date against Canadian issuers in both Canada …


London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard May 2009

London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Regulatory competition has long driven the path of corporate law in the federal system of the United States. Now, jurisdictional competition has spread to exchange listings. New York took an early lead in that competition in the 1990s, but has now been overtaken by London. Can London prevail in the competition for stock listings in the long term? This essay explores that question through the insights offered by Delaware’s dominance in the market for corporate listings. Delaware has prevailed by offering corporate directors a predictable body of that credibly shields directors from the vagaries of political backlash in times of …


Direct And Derivative Claims In Securities Fraud Litigation, Richard A. Booth May 2009

Direct And Derivative Claims In Securities Fraud Litigation, Richard A. Booth

Working Paper Series

In the typical securities fraud class action under Rule 10b-5, the plaintiff class consists of buyers who seek damages equal to the difference between the price paid for the stock during the fraud period and the lower price that prevails after corrective disclosure. The argument here is that this claim is really an amalgam of direct and derivative claims and that the derivative claims should result in recovery by the corporation for the benefit of all stockholders. There are three types of losses that arise in the typical stock-drop action. First, part of the loss may be attributable to lower …


Do Individual Investors Affect Share Price Accuracy? Some Preliminary Evidence, Alicia Davis Evans Apr 2009

Do Individual Investors Affect Share Price Accuracy? Some Preliminary Evidence, Alicia Davis Evans

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

A common belief is that individual investors are noise traders that distort stock prices. Because accurate share prices are important for economic functioning, the market effect of retail investors has significant regulatory implications. This paper, employing a new NYSE retail trading data set and the R2 metric of share price informedness, contributes to the debate by demonstrating that as the proportion of trading by individual investors increases, the R2 of firms decreases. Adherents of the R2 methodology hold that lower R2's imply more accurate stock prices. The results of an instrumental variable estimation suggest that this relationship is a causal …


Attorneys As Arbitrators, Stephen Choi, Jill Fisch, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2009

Attorneys As Arbitrators, Stephen Choi, Jill Fisch, Adam C. Pritchard

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

We study the role of attorneys as arbitrators in securities arbitration conducted by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD, n/k/a FINRA), using a dataset of 422 randomly selected arbitrators and their 6724 arbitration awards from 1992 to 2006. We find that arbitrators who also represent brokerage firms or brokers in other arbitrations award significantly less compensation to investor-claimants than other arbitrators. We find no significant effect for attorney-arbitrators who represent investors or both investors and brokerage firms. The relation between representing brokerage firms and arbitration awards remains significant even when we control for political outlook. We report that ideology …


One Hat Too Many? Investment Desegregation In Private Equity (Symposium) (With M. Henderson), William A. Birdthistle Jan 2009

One Hat Too Many? Investment Desegregation In Private Equity (Symposium) (With M. Henderson), William A. Birdthistle

All Faculty Scholarship

The nature of private equity investing has changed significantly as two dynamics have evolved in recent years: portfolio companies have begun to experience serious financial distress, and general partners have started to diversify and desegregate their investment strategies. Both developments have led private equity shops - once exclusively interested in acquiring equity positions through leveraged buyouts - to invest in other tranches of the investment spectrum, most particularly public debt. By investing now in both private equity and public debt of the same issuer, general partners are generating a host of new conflicts of interest between themselves and their limited …


The Unintended Disenfranchisement Of Shareholders, Stephen P. Wink Jan 2009

The Unintended Disenfranchisement Of Shareholders, Stephen P. Wink

Stephen P Wink

No abstract provided.


Activist Investing: A Fresh Look At Takeovers, Stephen P. Wink Jan 2009

Activist Investing: A Fresh Look At Takeovers, Stephen P. Wink

Stephen P Wink

No abstract provided.


A Requiem For The Retail Investor?, Alicia J. Davis Jan 2009

A Requiem For The Retail Investor?, Alicia J. Davis

Alicia Davis

No abstract provided.


Top Cop Or Regulatory Flop? The Sec At 75, Jill E. Fisch Jan 2009

Top Cop Or Regulatory Flop? The Sec At 75, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

In their forthcoming article, Redesigning the SEC: Does the Treasury Have a Better Idea?, Professors John C. Coffee, Jr., and Hillary Sale offer compelling reasons to rethink the SEC’s role. This article extends that analysis, evaluating the SEC’s responsibility for the current financial crisis and its potential future role in regulation of the capital markets. In particular, the article identifies critical failures in the SEC’s performance in its core competencies of enforcement, financial transparency, and investor protection. The article argues that these failures are not the result, as suggested by the Treasury Department Blueprint, of a balkanized regulatory system. Rather, …