Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Business Organizations Law (80)
- Law and Economics (20)
- Comparative and Foreign Law (18)
- Banking and Finance Law (17)
- Legislation (16)
-
- Litigation (15)
- State and Local Government Law (15)
- Business (13)
- Law and Society (11)
- Organizations Law (8)
- Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics (7)
- Contracts (7)
- Supreme Court of the United States (7)
- Antitrust and Trade Regulation (6)
- Legal History (6)
- Legal Profession (6)
- Administrative Law (5)
- Agency (5)
- Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility (5)
- Tax Law (5)
- Business Administration, Management, and Operations (4)
- Commercial Law (4)
- Corporate Finance (4)
- Finance and Financial Management (4)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (4)
- Civil Procedure (3)
- Courts (3)
- Economics (3)
- Institution
-
- University of Michigan Law School (65)
- Seattle University School of Law (9)
- University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (8)
- University of Cincinnati College of Law (7)
- Pepperdine University (4)
-
- Selected Works (4)
- Maurer School of Law: Indiana University (3)
- University of Colorado Law School (2)
- University of Georgia School of Law (2)
- University of Richmond (2)
- Vanderbilt University Law School (2)
- Cleveland State University (1)
- Columbia Law School (1)
- Duke Law (1)
- Fordham Law School (1)
- Georgetown University Law Center (1)
- Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School (1)
- Northwestern Pritzker School of Law (1)
- Pace University (1)
- SelectedWorks (1)
- Southern Methodist University (1)
- St. John's University School of Law (1)
- The University of Akron (1)
- Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center (1)
- University of Kentucky (1)
- University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law (1)
- University of San Diego (1)
- Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law (1)
- Washington and Lee University School of Law (1)
- William & Mary Law School (1)
- Publication Year
- Publication
-
- Articles (25)
- Michigan Law Review (21)
- Seattle University Law Review (9)
- All Faculty Scholarship (8)
- Faculty Articles and Other Publications (7)
-
- Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review (7)
- University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform (7)
- Pepperdine Law Review (4)
- Faculty Scholarship (3)
- Indiana Law Journal (2)
- Law Faculty Publications (2)
- Michigan Law Review First Impressions (2)
- Publications (2)
- Scholarly Works (2)
- Akron Law Review (1)
- Articles by Maurer Faculty (1)
- Benedict Sheehy (1)
- Book Chapters (1)
- Cleveland State Law Review (1)
- Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters (1)
- Faculty Publications (1)
- Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law (1)
- Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works (1)
- Latoya C. Brown, Esq. (1)
- Law Faculty Scholarly Articles (1)
- Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review (1)
- Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business (1)
- Other Publications (1)
- Pace Law Review (1)
- Renee Jones (1)
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 30 of 127
Full-Text Articles in Securities Law
No Peeking: Addressing Pretextual Inspection Demands By Competitor-Affiliated Shareholders, Lin (Lynn) Bai, Sean Meyer
No Peeking: Addressing Pretextual Inspection Demands By Competitor-Affiliated Shareholders, Lin (Lynn) Bai, Sean Meyer
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This article exposes how Delaware private companies are vulnerable to pretextual inspections under the guise of valuation by shareholders who are affiliated with competitors of the companies. The Delaware Court of Chancery’s 2020 decision in Woods v. Sahara Enterprises, Inc., which deviated from established law by switching the initial burden of proof of the shareholder’s motive to the target company, exacerbated this vulnerability. This article argues for reversing that decision and proposes changes in multiple areas of law to help companies fend off prying competitors who abuse statutory shareholder inspection rights for unfair advantages in competition.
Uncovering Elon's Data Empire, Carliss Chatman, Carla L. Reyes
Uncovering Elon's Data Empire, Carliss Chatman, Carla L. Reyes
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
In 2022, Elon Musk publicly announced that he would purchase Twitter after acquiring a five percent stake in the company. His failure to report this acquisition—and the company’s failure to notice—allowed Musk to continue purchasing stock at a deflated price, costing the company more than $156 million. After the signing of a merger agreement, the details of the transaction caused wild fluctuations in Tesla’s stock price. Musk’s complaints about the management of Twitter and the existence of bots on the platform led Twitter’s stock to also drop in value, as did Musk’s attempts to withdraw from the transaction. Even after …
Giving Shareholders The Right To Say No, Albert H. Choi, Adam C. Pritchard
Giving Shareholders The Right To Say No, Albert H. Choi, Adam C. Pritchard
Articles
When a public company releases misleading information that distorts the market for the company’s stock, investors who purchase at the inflated price lose money when (and if) the misleading information is later corrected. Under Rule 10b‑5 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, investors can seek compensation from corporations and their officers who make materially misleading statements that the investors relied on when buying or selling a security. Compensation is the obvious goal, but the threat of lawsuits can also benefit investors by deterring managers from committing fraud.
The Exit Theory Of Judicial Appraisal, William J. Carney, Keith Sharfman
The Exit Theory Of Judicial Appraisal, William J. Carney, Keith Sharfman
Faculty Publications
For many years, we and other commentators have observed the problem with allowing judges wide discretion to fashion appraisal awards to dissenting shareholders based on widely divergent, expert valuation evidence submitted by the litigating parties. The results of this discretionary approach to valuation have been to make appraisal litigation less predictable and therefore more costly and likely. While this has been beneficial to professionals who profit from corporate valuation litigation, it has been harmful to shareholders, making deals costlier and less likely to be completed.
In this Article, we propose to end the problem of discretionary judicial valuation by tracing …
Mutual Fund Stewardship And The Empty Voting Problem, Jill E. Fisch
Mutual Fund Stewardship And The Empty Voting Problem, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
When Roberta Karmel wrote the articles that are the subject of this symposium, she was skeptical of both the potential value of shareholder voting and the emerging involvement of institutional investors in corporate governance. In the ensuing years, both the increased role and engagement of institutional investors and the heightened importance of shareholder voting offer new reasons to take Professor Karmel’s concerns seriously. Institutional investors have taken on a broader range of issues ranging from diversity and political spending to climate change and human capital management, and their ability to influence corporate policy on these issues has become more significant. …
Shareholder Meetings And Freedom Rides: The Story Of Peck V. Greyhound, Harwell Wells
Shareholder Meetings And Freedom Rides: The Story Of Peck V. Greyhound, Harwell Wells
Seattle University Law Review
In 1947, civil rights pioneers James Peck and Bayard Rustin, members of the radical religious group, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and its offshoot, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), prepared to embark on the Journey of Reconciliation, an interracial protest against segregated busing in the American South. But first, they did something else radical: they bought shares in a corporation. A year later, after their travels in the South had led to terror, death threats, beatings, and in Rustin’s case, a term on a chain gang, they brought their civil rights activism to a new site of protest—the shareholder meeting …
The Independent Board As Shield, Gregory H. Shill
The Independent Board As Shield, Gregory H. Shill
Washington and Lee Law Review
The fiduciary duty of loyalty bars CEOs and other executives from managing companies for personal gain. In the modern public corporation, this restriction is reinforced by a pair of institutions: the independent board of directors and the business judgment rule. In isolation, each structure arguably promotes manager fidelity to shareholder interests—but together, they enable manager prioritization. This marks a particularly striking turn for the independent board. Its origin story and raison d’être lie in protecting shareholders from opportunism by managers, but it functions as a shield for managers instead.
Numerous defects in the design and practice of the independent board …
Crowding Out Theory: Protecting Shareholders By Balancing Executives’ Incentives In France, The United States, & China, Palden Flynn
Crowding Out Theory: Protecting Shareholders By Balancing Executives’ Incentives In France, The United States, & China, Palden Flynn
Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business
This paper explores the differences between executive compensation regimes in France, the United States, and China. It asks whether there is a link between state regulation of real options as a form of executive compensation and state regulation of shareholder protections. This paper argues that if a country regulates the use of real options as compensation, then that country is also more likely to have strong shareholder protection laws. This argument seems to be true based on a descriptive review of executive compensation law and shareholder protections in France, the United States, and China.
If it is true that countries …
The Modern Corporation And Private Property Revisited: Gardiner Means And The Administered Price, William W. Bratton
The Modern Corporation And Private Property Revisited: Gardiner Means And The Administered Price, William W. Bratton
Seattle University Law Review
This essay casts additional light on The Modern Corporation’s corporatist precincts, shifting attention to the book’s junior coauthor, Gardiner C. Means. Means is accurately remembered as the generator of Book I’s statistical showings—the description of deepening corporate concentration and widening separation of ownership and control. He is otherwise more notable for his absence than his presence in today’s discussions of The Modern Corporation. This essay fills this gap, describing the junior coauthor’s central concern—a theory of administered prices set out in a Ph.D. dissertation Means submitted to the Harvard economics department after the book’s publication.
Mootness Fees, Matthew D. Cain, Jill E. Fisch, Steven Davidoff Solomon, Randall Thomas
Mootness Fees, Matthew D. Cain, Jill E. Fisch, Steven Davidoff Solomon, Randall Thomas
All Faculty Scholarship
In response to a sharp increase in litigation challenging mergers, the Delaware Chancery Court issued the 2016 Trulia decision, which substantively reduced the attractiveness of Delaware as a forum for these suits. In this Article, we empirically assess the response of plaintiffs’ attorneys to these developments. Specifically, we document a troubling trend—the flight of merger litigation to federal court where these cases are overwhelmingly resolved through voluntary dismissals that provide no benefit to the plaintiff class but generate a payment to plaintiffs’ counsel in the form of a mootness fee. In 2018, for example, 77% of deals with litigation were …
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 …
Enforcing The Bargain V. Materiality Requirement: The Future Of Disclosure-Only Settlements Post-Trulia, Hao Jiang
Pace Law Review
In In re Trulia, Inc. Stockholder Litigation, the Delaware Court of Chancery broke away from its tradition of routinely approving disclosure-only settlements and required disclosures to be material in order to cure the conflict of interest between plaintiff’s counsel and the plaintiff class. I argue that fairness of settlement is the only standard in approving class action settlements and fairness will not be achieved by requiring materiality. Shareholders are legally entitled to all material information, as the board’s fiduciary duty dictates. Thus, material disclosures are enforcement of a legal duty that is no consideration for the release of shareholder claims. …
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 …
Theories And Solutions On Wolf Pack Activism, Kimberly Goldman
Theories And Solutions On Wolf Pack Activism, Kimberly Goldman
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
Section I will describe the key players involved in wolf pack activism and their conflicting motives, including both the members of wolf packs and those affected by them. Given that not all shareholders have common interests, this will include an analysis of the motives of various types of shareholders and an analysis of how these diverse motives may affect the wealth sustainability of companies. Section II will explain the phenomenon of wolf packs in corporate governance by describing the circumstances that lead to their formation and the various regulations (or lack thereof) pertaining to them. Section III will describe divergent …
Guardians Of The Galaxy: How Shareholder Lawyers Won Big For Their Clients And Vindicated The Integrity Of Our Economy, Daniel J. Morrissey
Guardians Of The Galaxy: How Shareholder Lawyers Won Big For Their Clients And Vindicated The Integrity Of Our Economy, Daniel J. Morrissey
Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review
Securities class actions are the most economically significant form of litigation. Highly skilled lawyers expend huge sums and relentless efforts in these matters but because of the costs involved and the potential for enormous liability very few of them ever make it to trial. This Article is the story of one that did, a mammoth fraud where a jury returned a $1.5 billion verdict that, with interest, increased to almost $2.5 billion by the time the case reached the appellate court.
There the Court upheld the shareholders’ theory that their damages could be measured by the excessive amounts they had …
Private Enforcement Of Company Law And Securities Regulation In Korea, Hwa-Jin Kim
Private Enforcement Of Company Law And Securities Regulation In Korea, Hwa-Jin Kim
Book Chapters
This chapter offers a brief overview of the private enforcement of corporate law and securities regulation in Korea, with particular reference to the current legislative efforts in the Korean National Assembly and recent court cases. This chapter also talks about Korea’s ill-fated and misguided adoption of the fraud-on-the-market theory in securities fraud litigation.
Standing Voting Instructions: Empowering The Excluded Retail Investor, Jill E. Fisch
Standing Voting Instructions: Empowering The Excluded Retail Investor, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
Despite the increasing importance of shareholder voting, regulators have paid little attention to the rights of retail investors who own approximately 30% of publicly traded companies but who vote less than 30% of their shares. A substantial factor contributing to this low turnout is the antiquated mechanism by which retail investors vote. The federal proxy voting rules place primary responsibility for facilitating retail voting in the hands of custodial brokers who have limited incentives to develop workable procedures, and current regulatory restrictions impede market-based innovation that incorporate technological innovations.
One of the most promising such innovations is standing voting instructions …
Rethinking Corporate Governance For A Bondholder Financed, Systemically Risky World, Steven L. Schwarcz
Rethinking Corporate Governance For A Bondholder Financed, Systemically Risky World, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
This Article makes two arguments that, combined, demonstrate an important synergy: first, including bondholders in corporate governance could help to reduce systemic risk because bondholders are more risk averse than shareholders; second, corporate governance should include bondholders because bonds now dwarf equity as a source of corporate financing and bond prices are increasingly tied to firm performance.
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 …
Disciplining Corporate Boards And Debtholders Through Targeted Proxy Access, Michelle M. Harner
Disciplining Corporate Boards And Debtholders Through Targeted Proxy Access, Michelle M. Harner
Indiana Law Journal
Corporate directors committed to a failed business strategy or unduly influenced by the company’s debtholders need a dissenting voice—they need shareholder nominees on the board. This Article examines the biases, conflicts, and external factors that impact board decisions, particularly when a company faces financial distress. It challenges the conventional wisdom that debt disciplines management, and it sug-gests that, in certain circumstances, the company would benefit from having the shareholders’ perspective more actively represented on the board. To that end, the Article proposes a bylaw that would give shareholders the ability to nominate direc-tors upon the occurrence of predefined events. Such …
Institutional Investors In Corporate Governance, Edward B. Rock
Institutional Investors In Corporate Governance, Edward B. Rock
All Faculty Scholarship
This chapter of the Oxford Handbook on Corporate Law and Governance examines the role of institutional investors in corporate governance and the role of regulation in encouraging institutional investors to become active stewards. I approach these topics through asking what lessons we can draw from the U.S. experience for the E.U.’s 2014 proposed amendments to the Shareholder Rights Directive.
I begin by defining the institutional investor category, and summarizing the growth of institutional investors’ equity holdings over time. I then briefly survey how institutional investors themselves are governed and how they organize share voting. This leads me to two central …
Is The Quest For Corporate Responsibility A Wild Good Chase? The Story Of Lovenheim V. Iroquois Brands, Ltd., D.A. Jeremy Telman
Is The Quest For Corporate Responsibility A Wild Good Chase? The Story Of Lovenheim V. Iroquois Brands, Ltd., D.A. Jeremy Telman
Akron Law Review
In Part I, this Article explores the law of shareholder proposals and the reasons why the SEC and the courts permit proposals relating to social or ethical issues (social proposals) so long as those issues relate to the corporation’s business. The focus here is on the regulation of such social proposals. Other regulations permitting the exclusion of shareholder proposals will be discussed only to the extent that they interact with the Rule relating to social proposals. Part II presents the complete narrative of the Lovenheim case, providing details that are not captured in the decision or in the limited secondary …
Market Efficiency And The Problem Of Retail Flight, Alicia J. Davis
Market Efficiency And The Problem Of Retail Flight, Alicia J. Davis
Articles
In 1950, 91 % of common stock in the U.S. was owned directly by individual inves tors. Today, that percentage stands at only 23%. The mass exodus of retail investors and their investment dollars has negative implications not only for capital formation and investor protection, but also for market efficiency. Individual investors are often assumed to be noise traders who distort stock prices and harm market functioning. Therefore, some argue that their withdrawal from the market should be of little concern; indeed, it should be celebrated. Recent empirical evidence calls this assertion of retail noise trading into doubt, and this …
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 …
Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill
Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill
Steven Davidoff Solomon
One big focus of attention, criticism, and proposals for reform in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has been securities disclosure. Many commentators have emphasized the complexity of the securities being sold, arguing that no one could understand the disclosure. Some observers have noted that disclosures were sometimes false or incomplete. What follows these issues, to some commentators, is that, whatever other lessons we may learn from the crisis, we need to improve disclosure. How should it be improved? Commentators often lament the frailties of human understanding, notably including those of everyday retail investors—people who do not understand or …
Is The Independent Director Model Broken?, Roberta S. Karmel
Is The Independent Director Model Broken?, Roberta S. Karmel
Seattle University Law Review
At common law, an interested director was barred from participating in corporate decisions in which he had an interest, and therefore “dis-interested” directors became desirable. This concept of the disinterested director developed into the model of an “independent director” and was advocated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and court decisions as a general ideal in a variety of situations. This Article explores doubts regarding the model of an “independent director” and suggests that director expertise may be more important that director independence. The Article then discusses shareholder primacy and sets forth alternatives to the shareholder primacy theory of the …
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, …