Law Commons^™

Stakeholderism Silo Busting, Aneil Kovvali

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The fields of antitrust, bankruptcy, corporate, and securities law are undergoing tumultuous debates. On one side in each field is the dominant view that each field should focus exclusively on a specific constituency—antitrust on consumers, bankruptcy on creditors, corporate law on shareholders, and securities regulation on financial investors. On the other side is a growing insurgency that seeks to broaden the focus to a larger set of stakeholders, including workers, the environment, and political communities. But these conversations have largely proceeded in parallel, with each debate unfolding within the framework and literature of a single field. Studying these debates together …

Foreign Judgments And Foreign Arbitral Awards Enforceability As A Factor And A Guarantee For Foreign Investments: The Case Of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Rashed Mohammed Arhama Alshamsi

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Foreign investments are considered an efficient and effective instrument to diversify and strengthen the economy; foreign investors generally need guarantees before entering a new market. One of these guarantees is a stable, transparent, predictable legal and judicial system. Such a system must be open to foreign laws and judgments as well as foreign arbitral awards, and it must also be flexible to increase foreign investments. Saudi Arabia has tried since the 50s’ to be more attractive to foreign investors and investments by enacting legislation and creating a modern court system to diversify their economy. However, the discretion of Saudi judges …

Taming Unicorns, Matthew Wansley

Indiana Law Journal

Until recently, most startups that grew to become valuable businesses chose to become public companies. In the last decade, the number of unicorns—private, venture-backed startups valued over one billion dollars—has increased more than tenfold. Some of these unicorns committed misconduct that they successfully concealed for years. The difficulty of trading private company securities facilitates the concealment of misconduct. The opportunity to profit from trading a company’s securities gives short sellers, analysts, and financial journalists incentives to uncover and reveal information about misconduct the company commits. Securities regulation and standard contract provisions restrict the trading of private company securities, which undermines …

Examining Stock Trading Reforms For Congress Hearing Before The U.S. House Of Representatives Committee On House Administration, Donna M. Nagy

Public Testimony by Maurer Faculty

Professor Nagy testified (text attached, video below) in support of federal legislation that would prohibit members of Congress from owning the securities of individual publicly traded companies as well as certain other investments that would likely conflict with their official duties.

It was nearly 10 years ago to the day when President Barack Obama signed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, requiring enhanced financial disclosures and creating new securities transaction reporting rules for members of Congress, certain members of their family, and their staff. The Act also made absolutely clear that a member of Congress who trades securities …

Nagy To Testify Before Congressional Committee On Stock Trading Reforms, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

No abstract provided.

Fraud On Any Market, Gregory Day, John T. Holden, Brian M. Mills

Indiana Law Journal

Claims of securities fraud had historically failed because investors seldom rely on false or misleading statements when transacting securities. To bolster confidence in securities markets, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a doctrine called “fraud-on-the-market” so that duped investors can show detrimental reliance without ever encountering the fraudulent statements. The doctrine assumes that a stock’s price reflects all material information, meaning that an investor who bought tainted stock has constructively relied on the fraud.

Fraud-on-the-market is not only unavailable in other markets but is also embattled within securities law. The doctrine has endured volleys of criticisms about whether markets actually absorb …

Esg And Climate Change Blind Spots: Turning The Corner On Sec Disclosure, Cynthia A. Williams, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article examines four areas in which the SEC, for more than a decade, resisted reform or impeded shareholders’ access to sought-after environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. These areas are: (1) the SEC’s refusal to act on several rulemaking petitions submitted during the years 2009 to 2018, which called for expanded ESG disclosure; (2) the SEC’s grudging promulgation of rules concerning social disclosures as required by Congress in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010; (3) the SEC’s 2020 revisions to SEC Rule 14a-8, which make the submission of shareholder proposals more difficult, thereby thwarting investor efforts to raise ESG concerns; …

Congressional Securities Trading, Gregory Shill

Indiana Law Journal

The trading of stocks and bonds by Members of Congress presents several risks that warrant public concern. One is the potential for policy distortion: lawmakers' personal investments may influence their official acts. Another is a special case of a general problem: that of insiders exploiting access to confidential information for personal gain. In each case, the current framework which is based on common law fiduciary principles is a poor fit. Surprisingly, rules from a related context have been overlooked.

Like lawmakers, public company insiders such as CEOs frequently trade securities while in possession of confidential information. Those insiders' trades are …

Chiarella V. United States And Its Indelible Impact On Insider Trading Law, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Insider trading cases, which are typically prosecuted as securities fraud, carry a mystique rarely present in securities litigation. As a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York once observed, the cases involve "'basically cops and robbers. . . .[d]id you get the information and did you trade on it?" It is no wonder that each insider trading case featured in this symposium presents a captivating story. But for two distinct reasons, Chiarella v. United States occupies a special place in history. It was the first prosecution under the federal securities laws for the crime of insider trading. …

Do Founders Control Start-Up Firms That Go Public?, Brian Broughman, Jesse M. Fried

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Black & Gilson (1998) argue that an IPO-welcoming stock market stimulates venture deals by enabling VCs to give founders a valuable "call option on control." We study 18,000 startups to investigate the value of this option. Among firms that reach IPO, 60% of founders are no longer CEO. With little voting power, only half of the others survive three years as CEO. At initial VC financing, the probability of getting real control of a public firm for three years is 0.4%. Our results shed light on control evolution in startups, and cast doubt on the plausibility of the call-option theory …

Energy Re-Investment, Hari M. Osofsky, Jacqueline Peel, Brett H. Mcdonnell, Anita Foerster

Indiana Law Journal

Despite worsening climate change threats, investment in energy—in the United States and globally—is dominated by fossil fuels. This Article provides a novel analysis of two pathways in corporate and securities law that together have the potential to shift patterns of energy investment.

The first pathway targets current investments and corporate decision-making. It includes efforts to influence investors to divest from owning shares in fossil fuel companies and to influence companies to address climate change risks in their internal decision-making processes. This pathway has received increasing attention, especially in light of the Paris Agreement and the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw …

Derivative Suit Under The Saudi Companies Law: Theory And Best Practice, Ahmed Saeed Khabti

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Saudi Arabia has been focused on diversification of its economy and attracting foreign investors. Countries that provide strong shareholder protection are more likely to attract foreign investors. However, there is a need for greater protection of minority shareholders in Saudi Arabia. This is because Saudi’s companies law fails to equip minority shareholders with adequate protective rights. A current issue with the new Saudi companies law can be linked to derivative suit, which is very important for both foreign investors and local investors. Derivative suit in Saudi Arabia is very limited and difficult to pursue because under article 79 of Saudi …

Beyond The Numbers: Substantive Gender Diversity In Boardrooms, Yaron G. Nili

Indiana Law Journal

The push for gender diversity on public companies’ boards has been gaining traction. Advocacy groups, institutional investors, regulators, and companies themselves have all recognized the need for more diverse boards. However, gender parity is still absent from most public companies’ boards, and a significant number of companies still have no women on their boards.

Current public and academic discourse has focused on the number of women serving on the board and their percentage compared to men as the litmus test for gender diversity. However, academic studies and the public push for more diversity have mostly failed to account for another …

Insider Trading Framework In United States And Egyptian Stock Markets, Elsayed Eldaydamony

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the law of insider trading in both the American and Egyptian legal systems. It seeks to pinpoint the policy rationale behind prohibiting insider trading, the theories of civil enforcement and criminalization, and the concept of tipping in the United States. It also analyzes the express statutory prohibition under Egyptian law. Furthermore, it explains the doctrinal link between securities fraud and insider trading in the U.S. as well as the enforcement mechanisms in place at the SEC, the NYSE, and the NASDAQ. It also surveys the surveillance authority of the Egyptian Financial Regularity Authority and of the Egyptian …

Engineered Credit Default Swaps: Innovative Or Manipulative?, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Credit default swaps (“CDS”) are, once again, making waves. Maligned for their role in the 2008 financial crisis and condemned by the Vatican, investors are once more utilizing CDS to achieve results of questionable market benefit. A CDS is a financial contract that allows investors to “bet” on whether a borrower will default on its loan. However, rather than waiting to see how their bets pan out, some CDS investors are collaborating with financially distressed borrowers to guarantee the profitability of their CDS positions—“engineering” the CDS’ outcome. Under the CDS contract, these collaborations are not prohibited, yet they have roiled …

A Critical Review Of U.S. Securities Laws And The Status Of Initial Coin Offerings: Potential Solutions For Issuers, Muhammed Kus

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Securities law in the United States has a unique approach to defining what is a security and what is not a security. It includes broadly defined terminology and describes several investment instruments that may be considered a security. Courts use one of two methods to determine whether an investment contract is a security: the Howey Test and the Risk Capital Test.

Initial Coin Offerings are one of the most recent instruments that courts and other governmental organizations need to examine in order to answer whether they meet the criteria of being a security. Depending on the result, the issuers may …

Do Independent Directors Curb Financial Fraud? The Evidence And Proposals For Further Reform†, S. Burcu Avci, Cindy A. Schipani, Nejat Seyhun

Indiana Law Journal

In this Article, we argue that the U.S. corporate governance rules put too much faith in the independent board members and insufficient emphasis on the shareholders to control and monitor top management. Given the agency problem between the board of directors and the shareholders, outside directors can be captured by management, thereby leading to inadequate checks on management. The evidence presented in this Article shows that outside board members do not exercise sufficient controls on management even when management has gone awry. To solve this agency problem, we propose increasing the power of the principals: make shareholder resolutions binding on …

The Inevitable United States Adoption Of Ifrs: How And Why The United States Should Be Prepared, Erika M. Tribuzi

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In an age where technology makes the world smaller and business transactions happen by the microsecond, both private and public entities have utilized global standards. These standards are often voluntary and span many different industries. In the twenty-first century, financial reporting standards have not been immune toward the pull for global uniformity. The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are a set of international financial reporting standards that countries can choose to adopt in full or in part. Currently, there are 143 countries that have adopted IFRS in some capacity. This Note addresses the voluntary nature of global standards in the …

Are Charter Schools The Second Coming Of Enron?: An Examination Of The Gatekeepers That Protect Against Dangerous Related-Party Transactions In The Charter School Sectors, Preston C. Green Iii, Bruce D. Baker, Joseph O. Oluwole

Indiana Law Journal

INTRODUCTION

OVERVIEW OF ENRON

A. ENRON AND DEREGULATION

B. THE LJM SPES

C. ENRON’S COLLAPSE

II: ENRON’S GATEKEEPER PROBLEMS

A. ARTHUR ANDERSEN

B. INDEPENDENT ANALYSTS

C. CREDIT RATING AGENCIES

D. ENRON’S BOARD OF DIRECTORS

E. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC)

III: CHARTER SCHOOLS AND RELATED-PARTY TRANSACTIONS

A. CHARTER SCHOOL DEREGULATION AND PRIVATE INVESTORS

B. EXAMPLES OF ENRON-LIKE RELATED-PARTY TRANSACTIONS

1. IMAGINE SCHOOLS

2. IVY ACADEMIA CHARTER SCHOOL

3. AMERICAN INDIAN MODEL CHARTER SCHOOLS

4. GRAND TRAVERSE ACADEMY

5. PENNSYLVANIA CYBER CHARTER SCHOOL

C. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, RELATED-PARTY TRANSACTIONS, AND THE NEED FOR STRONG GATEKEEPING

IV: CHARTER SCHOOL GATEKEEPERS

A. AUDITORS …

Legitimate Yet Manipulative: The Conundrum Of Open-Market Manipulation, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Is manipulation possible in the absence of misconduct? This is the foundational inquiry at the heart of open-market manipulation. Open-market manipulation captures the attention of lawmakers and courts because it is market manipulation effected entirely through facially legitimate transactions. Whereas traditional, well-accepted forms of market manipulation involve deception, fraud, and monopolistic prices, open-market manipulation involves no objectively bad acts and, instead, is accomplished through permissible transactions executed on the open market. As enforcement of this form of manipulation increases, the question arises—when, if ever, is a legitimate transaction manipulative?

To the Securities Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission …

The Statutory Authority For Court-Ordered Disgorgement In Sec Enforcement Actions, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What empowers the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to seek, and federal district courts to order, the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains from securities law violators? The short answer, which stood largely unchallenged for 46 years, is that federal courts may award disgorgement, at the request of the SEC, pursuant to the equitable powers that Congress conferred in the jurisdictional provisions of the federal securities laws. During the 2017 oral argument in Kokesh v. SEC, however, five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court interjected statements expressing varying degrees of skepticism. The tenor of the questions during the Kokesh argument, as …

Dictation And Delegation In Securities Regulation, Usha Rodrigues

Indiana Law Journal

When Congress undertakes major financial reform, either it dictates the precise con-tours of the law itself or it delegates the bulk of the rule making to an administrative agency. This choice has critical consequences. Making the law self-executing in federal legislation is swift, not subject to administrative tinkering, and less vulnerable than rule making to judicial second-guessing. Agency action is, in contrast, deliberate, subject to ongoing bureaucratic fiddling, and more vulnerable than statutes to judicial challenge.

This Article offers the first empirical analysis of the extent of congressional delegation in securities law from 1970 to the present day, examining nine …

A Legal Analysis On Enterprises Overseas Fundraising -- A Comparison Between The U.S. Market And The Taiwanese Market, Ke Ho

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1990’s, Taiwan’s government has made efforts to upgrade economic development by attraction more foreign enterprises to enter the domestic capital market. However, in the early 2000s, statistics indicated that the number of such new enterprise listings in Taiwan actually decreased. Some believe a very important factor in the decrease to the number of new listings in Taiwan is the current regulatory framework’s lack of flexibility. It is assumed that the regulatory intensity for foreign enterprises is very high. In order to review this intensity on the foreign issuer, this dissertation presents research on the law regulating a foreign …

In Search Of Balance: A Critical Review Of Private Placement Regulations Of The United States And South Korea, Daeil Kim

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Two main objectives of the securities offering regulation are to protect investors from frauds and to facilitate capital formation. Balancing these two objectives is a difficult task particularly for the private placement regulation. The primary focus of this study is to assess whether the current private placement regulations of the United States and South Korea are properly balancing these two objectives.

First, this study broadly reviews securities offering regulations and the historical developments of the private placement regulations of the United States and South Korea, and compares the current regulations of both countries. For the U.S. private placement regulation, this …

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 …

Salman V. United States: Insider Trading's Tipping Point?, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Beyond Dirks: Gratuitous Tipping And Insider Trading, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Did an investment banker who gratuitously shared material nonpublic information with his brother, with no expectation of receiving anything in return, commit securities fraud? And is the investment banker's brother-in-law jointly liable for trading securities on the basis of what he knew to be gratuitous tips? The Supreme Court is poised to answer those questions in Salman v. United States, after steering clear of insider trading law for nearly two decades. It has been even longer still since the Court last addressed securities fraud liability relating to stock trading tips-it articulated a "personal benefit" test for joint tipper-tippee liability in …

Enhancing The Compensatory Roles Of Financial Regulatory Agencies In South Korea: Lessons From The U.S. Sec's Fair Fund, Daeil Kim

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Recent financial scandals in South Korea that caused massive harms to financial consumers instigated voices that financial regulators should play a more active role in recompensing victims for losses incurred by misconduct in the financial market. In this regard, this thesis aims to suggest several considerations in developing the compensation scheme for injured financial consumers in Korea. This thesis first reviews the Federal Account for Investor Restitution (FAIR) Fund operated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Specifically, it broadly addresses the history, overall process, operation, and major issues related to the FAIR Fund. Based on the FAIR Fund review, …

Ceo Stock Ownership Policies: Rhetoric And Reality, Nitzan Shilon

Indiana Law Journal

This Article is the first academic endeavor to analyze the efficacy and transparency of stock ownership policies (SOPs) in U.S. public firms. SOPs generally require managers to hold some of their firms’ stock for the long term. Following the 2008 financial crisis, firms universally adopted these policies and cited them more than any other policy as a key element in their mitigation of risk. However, my analysis of the recent SOPs of S&P 500 CEOs disputes what firms claim about these policies. First, I find that SOPs are extremely ineffectual in making CEOs hold on to their firm’s stock; this …

The Costs Of Mandatory Cost-Benefit Analysis In Sec Rulemaking, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Cost-benefit analysis can be a valuable tool when deployed at the Securities and Exchange Commission's discretion to improve its rulemaking process and the overall quality of SEC rules. However, when a cost-benefit analysis obligation is imposed externally whether from an explicit statutory command or from a de facto requirement enforced through judicial review-the costs of that mandatory cost-benefit analysis can be quite substantial. This Article identifies and explores the qualitative costs that that have already been incurred, and are bound to continue, if the adequacy of the SEC's cost-benefit analysis remains subject to extensive judicial scrutiny. These costs will only …