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Full-Text Articles in Law
A New Urban Front For Shareholder Primacy, Anne Choike
A New Urban Front For Shareholder Primacy, Anne Choike
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
The hundredth anniversary of Dodge v. Ford marks an occasion to reflect upon what, if anything, has changed about shareholder primacy in a century. Seizing this opportunity, in this Article I analyze new local laws and ordinances that promote stakeholder governance and engagement, which seek to protect the interests of non-shareholder constituencies such as workers, the environment, and the communities in which corporations operate, among others. In doing so, I argue that such local laws meaningfully differ from traditional stakeholder protections, most significantly in the way that they weaken managerial accountability to shareholders. The emergence of these city laws challenges …
Should Shareholders Be Rewarded For Loyalty? European Experiments On The Wedge Between Tenured Voting And Takeover Law, Chiara Mosca
Should Shareholders Be Rewarded For Loyalty? European Experiments On The Wedge Between Tenured Voting And Takeover Law, Chiara Mosca
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
Corporate law reveals its democratic background when it comes to the general meetings of shareholders, finding, on both sides of the Atlantic, its most tangible expression in the “one share, one vote” principle. While, in the political landscape, the “one person, one vote” standard is absolute dogma and weighting votes according to people’s preferences and interests has never proved feasible, in the corporate scenario the one share, one vote principle is constantly challenged by the incentives of companies and their shareholders to shape corporate rights according to specific needs. In this respect, some legislators (specifically in France and Italy) have …
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. …
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 …
Who Speaks The Culture Of The Corporation?, Gwendolyn Gordon
Who Speaks The Culture Of The Corporation?, Gwendolyn Gordon
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
Recent cases – Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores and Citizens United chief among them – evince a new understanding of the nature of the corporation and its place in society. Whether a corporation has rights – such as those of religious exercise – is not, however, just a question of legal interpretation. To answer this question requires a theory of group or cultural identity, that is, a theory of how a group may have “culture” separate and apart from those of the individuals that comprise it. And such a theory must address how to understand the meaning of culture when …
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 …
Lessons From Institutional Shareholder Services: Governing Benefit Corporations' Third-Party Standard, Tammi S. Etheridge
Lessons From Institutional Shareholder Services: Governing Benefit Corporations' Third-Party Standard, Tammi S. Etheridge
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
Almost one hundred years ago, Henry Ford, as CEO of the Ford Motor Company, announced a plan to cease payment of special dividends to shareholders. Instead, the company would reinvest its profits to employ more workers and build more factories. Investing in new workers and factories would cut the cost of cars and make them affordable to more people. Ford publicly declared that his “ambition [was] to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting …
Enforceability Of Mandatory Arbitration Clauses For Shareholder-Corporation Disputes, Garry D. Hartlieb
Enforceability Of Mandatory Arbitration Clauses For Shareholder-Corporation Disputes, Garry D. Hartlieb
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
Investor litigation is an increasingly vexatious field of law. Nearly every time a significant change of control or corporate ownership occurs, plaintiffs’ attorneys file standardized complaints to set in motion class action suits. Ultimately, the settlements shareholders receive fail to achieve the practical effects that parties on both sides desire. Shareholders may receive pennies on the dollar of what they allege was lost by corporate wrongdoing, and, in some cases, shareholders may not receive monetary recovery as the settlement requires only that the corporation to make changes to its governing documents. These suits distract directors and management from the core …
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, …
Favoritism And Corporate Law: The Confused Corporate Opportunity Doctrine In The Hyundai Motor Case, Hwa-Jin Kim, Seung Hwan Lee, Stephen M. Woodcock
Favoritism And Corporate Law: The Confused Corporate Opportunity Doctrine In The Hyundai Motor Case, Hwa-Jin Kim, Seung Hwan Lee, Stephen M. Woodcock
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
Core legal principles of U.S. corporate law are often met with perplexity in foreign jurisdictions. This is especially true for legal principles that are controversial even in the U.S. This Article takes the corporate opportunity doctrine and examines how it has been exported to the civil law regime in Korea. Korean conglomerates such as Samsung Group and Hyundai Motor Group have become major players in the global market, but corporate law and practice in Korea have had a difficult time keeping up with developments in the business sector. The Hyundai Motor Case demonstrates an ambitious, but ill-fated, attempt at the …
A Very Quiet Revolution: A Primer On Securities Crowdfunding And Title Iii Of The Jobs Act, Thaya Brook Knight, Huiwen Leo, Adrian A. Ohmer
A Very Quiet Revolution: A Primer On Securities Crowdfunding And Title Iii Of The Jobs Act, Thaya Brook Knight, Huiwen Leo, Adrian A. Ohmer
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
This essay introduces the complex regulatory regime that governs the public sale of all securities, no matter how small the offeror. It is intended as a rudimentary roadmap for the start-up or its counsel and will, hopefully, help to illuminate the traps for the unwary while providing an overview of the regulatory universe in which securities crowdfunding will operate.