Law Commons^™

Board Governance For The Twenty-First Century, Faith Stevelman, Sarah C. Haan

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Contested Visions: The Value Of Systems Theory For Corporate Law, Tamara Belinfanti, Lynn A. Stout

Articles & Chapters

Despite the dominant role corporations play in our economy, culture, and politics, the nature and purpose of corporations remains hotly contested. This conflict was brought to the fore in the recent Supreme Court opinions in Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. Although the prevailing narrative for the past quarter-century has been that corporations “belong” to shareholders and should pursue “shareholder value,” support for this approach, which has been justified as essential for managerial accountability, is eroding. It persists today primarily in the form of the argument that corporations should seek “long-term” shareholder value. Yet, as this Article shows, when shareholder value …

Ask The Professor: Will The Recent Supreme Court Case In Salman Result In More Cftc Enforcement Actions Charging Insider Trading?, Ronald H. Filler, Jerry W. Markham

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

When All Else Fails: The Evolution Of Customer Asset Protections After Brokerage Bankruptcy, Ronald H. Filler

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Contemplating The Gap-Filling Role Of Social Intrapreneurship, Tamara Belinfanti

Articles & Chapters

Social intrapreneurs occupy an intersectional space within the large corporate form at the crossroads of innovation, profit, and social good. They are often described as "disruptive" because they devise new ways to tackle problems, usually social in nature, in a manner that disrupts traditional operating models or long-standing assumptions. Although much has been written about social intrapreneurs in managerial literature, legal literature has been silent. This Article reverses that trend and develops a theory of social intrapreneurship from a corporate law perspective. Specifically, this Article posits that social intrapreneurship in terms of praxis, characteristics, and process can be conceptualized as …

Improving Hedge Fund Governance, Houman B. Shadab

Articles & Chapters

This Article provides the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the internal governance of hedge funds. Hedge fund governance consists of the funds’ underlying legal regime and the practices they adopt in response to lacking permanent capital and to reduce agency costs. Hedge fund governance is important because better governance can improve investor returns and help managers raise and retain capital. I argue that hedge fund governance is best understood as a type of responsive managerialism. It is a type of managerialism because applicable law and contracting structures give managers uniquely wide-ranging control over the fund and its operations. Hedge fund …

Bitcoin Financial Regulation: Securities, Derivatives, Prediction Markets, And Gambling, Jerry Brito, Houman B. Shadab, Andrea Castillo

Articles & Chapters

The next major wave of Bitcoin regulation will likely be aimed at financial instruments, including securities and derivatives, as well as prediction markets and even gambling. While there are many easily regulated intermediaries when it comes to traditional securities and derivatives, emerging bitcoin denominated instruments rely much less on traditional intermediaries such as banks and securities exchanges. Additionally, the block chain technology that Bitcoin introduced for the first time makes completely decentralized markets and exchanges possible, thus eliminating the need for intermediaries in complex financial transactions. In this Article we survey the type of financial instruments and transactions that will …

Performance-Sensitive Debt: From Asset-Based Loans To Startup Financing, Houman B. Shadab

Articles & Chapters

This Article develops a unique theory of performance-sensitive debt and argues that certain revenue-stage startups may be missing out on an important source of capital from asset-based loans. Debt contracts are performance sensitive to the extent any of the borrower’s obligations adjust in response to the performance of the borrower. The three main types of performance sensitivity I identify are (1) a loan’s interest rate adjusting based on the performance of the borrower; (2) the amount of available credit adjusting based on the value of collateral; and (3) renegotiation following breach of a loan covenant. Conceptualizing performance sensitivity as a …

Improving Hedge Fund Governance, Houman B. Shadab

Articles & Chapters

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the internal governance of hedge funds. The primary components of hedge fund governance are investors with a high propensity to exercise their short-term redemption rights; managers with high pay performance sensitivity, because they are being compensated with an annual performance-based fee plus earnings from their own investment in the funds they manage; sophisticated investors who demand quality governance; and short-term creditors and derivatives counterparties who provide close monitoring. Hedge fund governance needs the most improvement in the areas of performance reporting (valuation) and the timing of performance-fee calculations. Further, counterintuitively, in some circumstances …

Ask The Professor: How Will The Seventh Circuit Rule In Sentinel Ii?, Ronald H. Filler

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Myths About Shareholder Value, Faith Stevelman

Articles & Chapters

The concept of unitary "shareholder value" and its reflection in nearterm stock prices formed the centrepiece of contemporary corporate governance up to the 2008 financial crisis. The crisis has elicited both more critical and clearer, book-length accounts of the relationship of law, corporate governance and finance. The concepts analysed in Lynn Stout's The Shareholder Value Myth are considered herein, as part of a commentary on the continuing evolution of academic corporate law and governance.

Hedge Fund Governance, Houman B. Shadab

Articles & Chapters

This Article provides the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the internal governance of hedge funds. Hedge fund governance consists of the funds' underlying legal regime and the practices they adopt in response to lacking permanent capital and to reduce agency costs. Hedge fund governance is important because better governance can improve investor returns and help managers raise and retain capital. I argue that hedge fund governance is best understood as a type of responsive managerialism. It is a type of managerialism because applicable law and contracting structures give managers uniquely wide-ranging control over the fund and its operations. Hedge fund …

Can A Secured Creditor Be Denied The Right To Credit Bid When The Creditor’S Collateral Is Sold Pursuant To A Chapter 11 Plan Of Reorganization?, Marshall E. Tracht

Articles & Chapters

CASE AT A GLANCE

A bankruptcy plan can only be confirmed over the objection of a secured creditor if the plan is found to be “fair and equitable.” The fair and equitable standard requires, at a minimum, that (i) the creditor may retain its lien on its collateral; (ii) the collateral will be sold subject to the creditor’s right to credit bid its debt; or (iii) the creditor will receive the “indubitable equivalent” of its claim. The Supreme Court must decide whether a plan can provide for the sale of collateral without granting the creditor the right to credit bid …

Ask The Professor: “Omg! What Did Mf Global Do?, Ronald Filler

Articles & Chapters

This paper, written one week after MF Global, a large futures brokerage firm filed for bankruptcy, analyzes the bankruptcy, its impact on futures customers and the shortfall in customer funds that occurred on October 31, 2011. Subsequent to MF Global's bankruptcy, several customer protection rules were amended by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the National Futures Association.

Deconstructing Lyondell: Reconstructing Revlon, Lawrence Lederman

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Market Meltdown Of 2008 And The Future Of Financial Reregulation [Article], Faith Stevelman

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Guilty By Association? Regulating Credit Default Swaps, Houman B. Shadab

Articles & Chapters

A wide range of U.S. policymakers initiated a series of actions in 2008 and 2009 to bring greater regulation and oversight to credit default swaps (CDSs) and other over-the-counter derivatives. The policymakers’ stated motivations echoed widely expressed criticisms of the regulation, characteristics, and practices of the CDS market, and focused on the risks of the instruments and the lack of public transparency over their utilization and execution. Certainly, the misuse of certain CDSs enabled mortgage-related security risk to become overconcentrated in some financial institutions.

Yet as the analysis in this Article suggests, failing to distinguish between CDS derivatives and the …

Ask The Professor: Portfolio Margining – How Will Dodd-Frank Impact Its Utilization?, Ronald Filler

Articles & Chapters

This article analyzes the background and current status of portfolio margining, how it has evolved over the past several years, and how the recent Dodd-Frank Act will impact its utilization and effectiveness. Portfolio margining allows a broker-dealer to analyze a client's total overall portfolio from a risk-based analytical model, establishing the proper minimum initial margin requirements for the entire portfolio applying certain parameters. To be a more effective tool, changes to the U.S. Bankrupcty Code were needed. The Dodd-Frank Act made those legislative changes. It's now up to the regulators to make portfolio margining an even more effective and utilized …

Ask The Professor: How Does The U.K. Client Money Rules Differ From The U.S. Customer Segregated Rules When The Custodian Firm Fails To Treat Customer Property Properly?, Ronald Filler

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Looking Back And Looking Ahead As The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Turns Thirty-Five: The Role Of Public Disclosure Of Lending Data In A Time Of Financial Crisis, Richard D. Marsico

Articles & Chapters

This article examines the history of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and makes proposals for improving it to help prevent another economic crisis. Passed in 1975, HMDA requires most lenders to disclose information about their home mortgage loans, including the number of home mortgage applications it received; the purpose of each application; the type of loan; the decision on the application; the race, gender, and income of the loan applicant/borrower; the location of the loan and the median income and racial composition of the neighborhood; and the interest rate on the loan. HMDA was originally conceived of as a …

Counterparty Regulation And Its Limits: The Evolution Of The Credit Default Swaps Market, Houman B. Shadab

Articles & Chapters

Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives are widely regarded as “unregulated” financial instruments. While it is true that OTC derivatives are subject to relatively minimal federal regulation, OTC derivatives are in fact subject to a robust form of control and governance in the form of counterparty regulation. Counterparty regulation arises when two or more parties are continually exposed to counterparty credit risk for the duration of a long-term contract, and it consists of specific governance mechanisms such as the daily adjustment of collateral and the netting out of redundant trades. Counterparty regulation governs derivatives transactions but not securities transactions.

This essay reviews recent …

Ask The Professor: Who Has, Or Who Should Have, Jurisdiction Over Cds Clearing?, Ronald Filler

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Law And Economics Of Hedge Funds: Financial Innovation And Investor Protection, Houman B. Shadab

Articles & Chapters

A persistent theme underlying contemporary debates about financial regulation is how to protect investors from the growing complexity of financial markets, new risks, and other changes brought about by financial innovation. Increasingly relevant to this debate are the leading innovators of complex investment strategies known as hedge funds. A hedge fund is a private investment company that is not subject to the full range of restrictions on investment activities and disclosure obligations imposed by the federal securities laws, that compensates management in part with a fee based on annual profits, and typically engages in the active trading of financial instruments. …

Introduction, Richard D. Marsico

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Hedge Funds And The Financial Crisis, Houman B. Shadab

Articles & Chapters

The performance of hedge funds during the financial crisis suggests that wide-ranging financial regulation is not always necessary to advance investor protection and financial stability. While 2008 was a year of record hedge fund losses and investor withdrawals that came about in part because many hedge fund managers failed to adequately respond to the financial crisis, the hedge fund industry significantly outperformed the heavily regulated mutual fund sector and, unlike the banking industry, was never in jeopardy of collapsing. Hedge funds did not cause or meaningfully exacerbate the financial crisis and in fact have reduced its impact and are helping …

Racial Disparities In Subprime Home Mortgage Lending In New York City: Meaning And Implications, Richard D. Marsico, Jane Yoo

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

A Fair Price And A Fair Deal: On The Future Of 'Entire Fairness' In Freezeouts, Faith Stevelman

Articles & Chapters

Controlling shareholders can compel the sale of minorities’ shares in freezeouts, potentially to their financial detriment. To limit controllers’ opportunism and support the value of minorities’ investments, the Delaware supreme court has endorsed strong minority shareholder protections under the rubric of 'Entire Fairness' – the governing standard for cash-out mergers. However, the court of chancery has refused to apply Entire Fairness to tender offer freezeouts, and is advocating unifying freezeout doctrine around a looser, deferential standard of review. The influence of popular and Congressional concern over excess plaintiff lawyers’ fees and discovery costs is likely making itself felt, although the …

Coming Together After The Crisis: Global Convergence Of Private Equity And Hedge Funds, Houman B. Shadab

Articles & Chapters

Prior to the subprime-initiated financial crisis, there was a trend within the alternative investment industry towards the convergence of certain private equity and hedge fund strategies and structures. This brief article suggests that although the financial crisis will slow the process of convergence, the trend toward convergence will ultimately continue and strengthen, albeit in some ways along a different trajectory than before the crisis and with some important variations across national boundaries.

An Analysis Of The Implementation And Impact Of The 2004-2005 Amendments To The Community Reinvestment Act Regulations: The Continuting Importance Of The Cra Examination Process, Josh Silver, Richard D. Marsico

Articles & Chapters

In 2004 and 2005, the four federal banking agencies that enforce the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) amended their CRA regulations. Community groups were concerned that these amendments would have a negative impact on bank CRA performance. In particular, they were concerned that community development lending and investment and the provision of bank branches and other banking services in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods would decline. This article studies the impact of the changes. In summary, the study found that: 1) the CRA examination process has an impact on bank behavior; 2) community development lending and investment by certain lending institutions declined …

Disney Examined; A Case Study In Corporate Governance And Ceo Succession, Lawrence Lederman

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.