Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Third Party Access And Refusal To Deal In European Energy Networks: How Sector Regulation And Competition Law Meet Each Other, Michael Diathesopoulos

Michael Diathesopoulos

In this paper, we will analyse the issue of concurrence between competition and sector rules and the relation between parallel concepts within the two different legal frameworks. We will firstly examine Third Party Access in relation to essential facilities doctrine and refusal of access and we will identify the common points and objectives of these concepts and the extent to which they provide a context to each other’s implementation. Second, we will focus on how Commission uses sector regulation and objectives as a context within the process of implementation of competition law in the energy sector and third, we will …

A Contractual Approach To Shareholder Oppression Law, Benjamin Means

Faculty Publications

According to standard law and economics, minority shareholders in closely held corporations must bargain against opportunism by controlling shareholders before investing. Put simply, you made your bed, now you must lie in it. Yet most courts offer a remedy for shareholder oppression, often premised on the notion that controlling shareholders owe fiduciary duties to the minority or must honor the minority's reasonable expectations. Thus, law and economics, the dominant mode of corporate law scholarship, appears irreconcilably opposed to minority shareholder protection, a defining feature of the existing law of close corporations.

This Article contends that a more nuanced theory of …

Agenda: 2010 World Energy Justice Conference: Emerging Solutions For The Energy Poor: Technological, Entrepreneurial And Institutional Challenges, University Of Colorado Boulder. Center For Energy & Environmental Security, Colorado Journal Of International Environmental Law And Policy

2010 World Energy Justice Conference (November 5)

This conference is a sequel to the 2009 World Energy Justice Conference (WEJC 2009) which began examining ways of mainstreaming safe, clean, and efficient energy for the world's Energy Poor (EP). The EP number two and a half billion people living on less than $1-2 a day who have no access to modern energy services. WEJC 2010 more fully develops these themes. WEJC 2010 will explore how the next round of global warming meetings in Cancun could design new flexibility mechanisms that give credits, for example, for the reduction of black carbon by the adoption of cookstoves, and embrace small …

The New Financial Deal: Understanding The Dodd-Frank Act And Its (Unintended) Consequences, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Contrary to rumors that the Dodd-Frank Act is an incoherent mess, its 2,319 pages have two very clear objectives: limiting the risk of the shadow banking system by more carefully regulating derivatives and large financial institutions; and limiting the damage caused by a financial institution’s failure. The new legislation also has a theme: government partnership with the largest Wall Street banks. The vision emerged almost by accident from the Bear Stearns and AIG bailouts of 2008 and the commandeering of the bankruptcy process to rescue Chrysler and GM in 2009. Its implications for derivatives regulation could prove beneficial: Dodd-Frank will …

Leveraged Etfs: The Trojan Horse Has Passed The Margin-Rule Gates, William M. Humphries

Seattle University Law Review

What do the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the demise of Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns all have in common? One word: leverage. The misuse of leverage, in all its forms, contributed greatly to all of these events. Yet even today, common investors can purchase a leveraged exchange-traded fund (leveraged ETF), a complex product that uses leverage to increase returns, without triggering applicable laws designed to regulate the use of leverage. This Comment articulates the basics surrounding the functions and operations of leveraged ETFs and margin rules in order to assess the compatibility of the two. The Comment argues …

Business Taxes And International Competitiveness: Understanding How Taxes Can Distort Capital Ownership And Designing A Nondistortive International Tax System, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

Around the world, policymakers are obsessed with the competitiveness of their domestic companies and domestically based multinational corporations (MNCs). Such concerns frequently influence policy, especially tax policy. In this paper, I develop a theory of how taxes affect the international competitiveness of businesses. I then use that theory to evaluate basic tax policy decisions, such as the choice between residence- and source-based taxation and the level of tax rates, and to understand the impact various provisions in the U.S. Internal Revenue Code are likely to have on the competitiveness of U.S.-based corporations and MNCs.

From Energy Sector Inquiry To Recent Antitrust Decisions In European Energy Markets: Competition Law As A Means To Implement Energy Sector Regulation In Eu, Michael Diathesopoulos

Michael Diathesopoulos

This paper presents the conceptual path followed by European Union, European Commission and European Competition Network, after the Energy Sector Inquiry (2007) towards the realisation of the objective of an Energy Internal Market, fully functional and open to competition. Firstly, we examine the findings of Sector Inquiry and then we describe how the Third Energy Package - that followed - tried to address the issues highlighted by the Inquiry and how Third Energy Package introduces a promising but complex system, in order to develop sector rules. Following the above, we proceed to a brief but close examination of 10 recent …

Relational Contract Theory And Management Contracts: A Paradigm For The Application Of The Theory Of The Norms, Michael Diathesopoulos

Michael Diathesopoulos

This paper examines management contracts as a paradigm for the application of relational contracts theory and especially of the theory of contractual and relational norms. This theory, deriving from Macauley's implications, but structured and analysed by I.R. MacNeil gives us a framework for the explanation and understanding of contractual obligations and business relations' rules and practice. After presenting the key literature about the norms theory and especially defining the content of MacNeil's norms, we define management contracts as relations, characterised by a high relational element and we explain why, investigating all their features, which make them a suitable object for …

Trusts Versus Corporations: An Empirical Analysis Of Competing Organizational Forms, A. Joseph Warburton

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This paper studies the effects of organizational form on managerial behavior and firm performance, from an empirical perspective. Managers of trusts are subject to stricter fiduciary responsibilities than managers of corporations. This paper examines the ramifications empirically, by exploiting data generated by a change in British regulations in the 1990s that allowed mutual funds to organize as either a trust or a corporation. I find evidence that trust law is effective in curtailing opportunistic behavior, as trust managers charge significantly lower fees than their observationally equivalent corporate counterparts. Trust managers also incur lower risk. However, evidence suggests that trust managers …

The Law Of Vertical Integration And The Business Firm: 1880-1960, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Vertical integration occurs when a firm does something for itself that it could otherwise procure on the market. For example, a manufacturer that opens its own stores is said to be vertically integrated into distribution. One irony of history is that both classical political economy and neoclassicism saw vertical integration and vertical contractual arrangements as much less threatening to competition than cartels or other horizontal arrangements. Nevertheless, vertical integration has produced by far the greater amount of legislation at both federal and state levels and has motivated many more political action groups. Two things explain this phenomenon. First, while economists …

Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill

Seattle University Law Review

Shareholders, and the relationship between shareholders and management, lay at the heart of Professor Berle’s scholarship. The goal of this Article is to compare the image of shareholders emerging from The Modern Corporation and Private Property and the Berle/Dodd debate with a range of contemporary visions of the shareholder that underpin some international regulatory responses to recent financial debacles, from Enron to the current global financial crisis. As the Article dis- cusses, these recent developments in the era of financial crises have prompted a reevaluation of the traditional image of the shareholder—and the role of the shareholder in the modern …

Tracking Berle’S Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation’S Last Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

Seattle University Law Review

Readers game enough to work through all three hundred pages of The Modern Corporation and Private Property looking for insights on corporate law today encounter two, apparently contradictory, lines of thought. One line, set out in Books II and III, resonates comfortably with today’s shareholder-centered corporate legal theory. Here the book teaches that even as ownership and control have separated, managers should function as trustees for the shareholders and so should exercise their wide-ranging powers for the shareholders’ benefit. The other line of thought emerges in Books I and IV, where The Modern Corporation encases this shareholder trust model in …

See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations, Erika George

Seattle University Law Review

Much corporate legal scholarship considers such fact patterns as beyond the scope of the discipline’s core concerns. Yet, increasingly, questions are asked concerning the scale and scope of modern corporate power. This Article will challenge the conventional understanding of what the core discipline of corporate law should encompass and argues that the failure to focus on precisely these sorts of factual scenarios involving allegations of corporate complicity in human rights violations and environmental degradation is misguided and short-sighted.

Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution, Cristie Ford, Carol Liao

Seattle University Law Review

We are in a time when the notion of property is in flux. The derivatives revolution has shattered the “atom of property” well beyond what was originally imagined in 1932 by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means. This disaggregation has had fascinating, and often adverse, effects on corporate law and securities regulation. Moreover, the phenomenon has had the unexpected effect of permitting some parties that already possess considerable social, economic, and political power to accumulate even more.

Rethinking The Separation Of Ownership From Management In American History, Kenneth Lipartito, Yumiko Morii

Seattle University Law Review

In <em>The Modern Corporation and Private Property</em>, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means would use AT&T as a prime example of what they saw as a dangerous new trend, the replacement of ownership-based capitalism with giant corporations controlled by a small group of propertyless managers. Indeed, AT&T became Berle and Means’ favorite example. . . . As we shall see, however, the claim that AT&T was a leading example of the separation of ownership from management is incomplete. More importantly, the common interpretation of Berle and Means’ work is mistaken, placing the emphasis incorrectly on the number of shareholders and reading …

The Overstated Promise Of Corporate Governance, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

Review of Jonathan Macey, Corporate Governance: Promises Kept, Promises Broken (Princeton, 2008)

When The Government Is The Controlling Shareholder: Implications For Delaware, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tracking Berle's Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation's Law Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Multiple Gatekeepers, Andrew F. Tuch

Scholarship@WashULaw

In the context of business transactions, gatekeepers are lawyers, investment bankers, accountants and other actors with the capacity to monitor and control the disclosure decisions of their clients – and thereby to deter corporate securities fraud. After each wave of corporate upheaval, including the recent financial crisis, the spotlight of responsibility invariably falls on gatekeepers for failing to avert the wrongs of their clients. A rich vein of literature has considered what liability regime would lead gatekeepers to deter securities fraud optimally, but has overlooked the phenomenon that multiple interdependent gatekeepers act on business transactions and thus form an interlocking …

A Comprehensive Theory Of Deal Structure: Understanding How Transactional Structure Creates Value, Michael S. Knoll, Daniel M. G. Raff

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lyondell: A Note Of Approbation, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Case Against Shareholder Empowerment, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Corporate Environmental Social Responsibility: Corporate "Greenwashing" Or A Corporate Culture Game Changer?, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article focuses on the extent to which unenforceable voluntary initiatives undertaken by corporations can change corporate behavior to make businesses more environmentally responsible, i.e. not only comply with the law, but to do more than the law actually requires of them. These initiatives, loosely gathered under the umbrella of a movement called corporate social responsibility (CSR), are often proposed by the government as a way to fill regulatory and enforcement gaps or by industry, often as an alternative to regulatory requirements. In each case, their goal is to improve the compliance record of businesses and, in some cases, to …

Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps, Charles R.T. O'Kelley

Seattle University Law Review

On the weekend of November 6–8, 2009, scholars from around the world gathered in Seattle for a symposium—In Berle’s Footsteps—celebrating the launch of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. As founding director of the Berle Center, I described our undertaking: “It is with a profound sense of obligation to the legacy that has been entrusted to my care, that I announce the launching of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. It is a privilege to follow in Berle’s footsteps.”

Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii

Seattle University Law Review

Law is, in many ways, a backwards-looking field. We litigate over facts that have already occurred, challenge deals that have already been signed, and apply rules of decision based on previously-established precedent or statutes already enacted. To the extent that this Center and the symposium reflect on Berle’s work, they too are an exercise in looking back. Indeed, some might say the establishment of a Center named in Berle’s honor is a monument to the past.

Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces

Seattle University Law Review

Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means painted what remains a defining portrait of corporate law. The separation of ownership and control they described and the agency costs it causes are still a central concern of the law of corporate governance. For that reason, Berle’s work is relevant nearly eighty years after its publication. Seemingly forgotten, however, is that Berle’s enduring description of the corporate structure was published before most of today’s corporate law was in place. His work preceded the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and even preceded the dominance of Delaware common law in …

Monitoring To Reduce Agency Costs: Examining The Behavior Of Independent And Non-Independent Boards, Anita Anand, Frank Milne, Lynnette Purda

Seattle University Law Review

Berle and Means’s analysis of the corporation—in particular, their view that those in control are not the owners of the corporation—raises questions about actions that corporations take to counter concerns regarding management’s influence. What mechanisms, if any, do corporations implement to balance the distribution of power in the corporation? To address this question, we analyze boards of directors’ propensity to voluntarily adopt recommended corporate governance practices. Because board independence is one way to enhance shareholders’ ability to monitor management, we probe whether firms with independent boards of directors (which we define as boards with either an independent chair or a …

Securities Intermediaries And The Separation Of Ownership From Control, Jill E. Fisch

Seattle University Law Review

The Modern Corporation & Private Property is a paradigm-shifting analysis of the modern corporation. The book is perhaps best known for the insights of Berle and Means about the separation of ownership from control and the consequences of that separation for the allocation of power within the corporation. The Berle and Means story focuses on the shareholder as the owner of the corporation. Berle and Means saw the mechanism of centralized management—in which the shareholder retains the economic interest but not the control rights associated with ownership—as threatening the conception of shareholder interests in terms of property rights. In particular, …

The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel

Seattle University Law Review

In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner Means wrote about the separation of ownership from control in corporations. They noted that the interests of the controlling directors and managers can diverge from those of the shareholder owners of the firm. . . . There are those who consider such a decoupling beneficial. Others express the same concern that Berle and Means have expressed. And depending on what one focuses on in viewing the pluses and minuses of these separations, one could reach different conclusions. I reach a number of conclusions. First, the separation of …

The Modern Corporation As Social Construction, Mark S. Mizruchi, Daniel Hirschman

Seattle University Law Review

Classic works, Mark Mizruchi and Lisa Fein argued, share a particular fate. Authors often cite classic works without reading them—or without reading them carefully. . . . Yet perhaps no single work fits the above description better than one of the most important books on the large corporation ever published: Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’s The Modern Corporation and Private Property. One can speculate that few works in the social sciences have been as often cited and as little read. As a consequence, we would expect The Modern Corporation to be a good candidate for either selective interpretation or …