Law Commons^™

Piling On? An Empirical Study Of Parallel Derivative Suits, Stephen J. Choi, Jessica Erickson, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Using a sample of all companies named as defendants in securities class actions between July 1, 2005 and December 31, 2008, we study parallel suits relying on state corporate law arising out of the same allegations as the securities class actions. We test several ways that parallel suits may add value to a securities class action. Most parallel suits target cases involving obvious indicia of wrongdoing. Moreover, we find that although a modest percentage of parallel suits are filed first, over 80 percent are filed after a securities class action (termed “follow-on” parallel suits). We find that parallel suits and, …

Enforcement Of Corporate And Securities Laws In India: The Arrival Of The Class Action?, Vikramaditya S. Khanna

Book Chapters

Chapter from Enforcement of Corporate and Securities Law: China and the World. Howson, N.C. and Huang, R.H., eds.

Corporate governance in Asia has garnered a great deal of recent scholarly attention.1 One topic that permeates discussions across countries is the enforcement of corporate and securities laws – with some countries relying primarily on public enforcement (i.e. enforcement by government) while others rely on some combination of public and private enforcement (i.e. enforcement by private shareholders). Further, understanding how enforcement is operationalised and its concomitant strengths and weaknesses enables us to better appreciate the actual corporate governance situation in many …

Conclusion - Between "Law In Books" And "Law In Action", Nicholas C. Howson, H. Huang

Book Chapters

Any attempt to comprehensively analyse the enforcement of corporate law and securities regulation is difficult, not only because there are so many distinct national systems in play, but also because, we need to examine both formal enforcement mechanisms and the way in which such mechanisms are applied in practice. If nothing else, the expert analyses presented in the foregoing chapters of this book confirm that with respect to enforcement issues a rather large gap does exist between what Roscoe Pound memorably called 'law in books' and 'law in action'.

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.

Stock Market Futurism, Merritt Fox, Gabriel Rauterberg

Articles

The U.S. stock market is undergoing extraordinary upheaval. The approval of the application of the Investors Exchange (IEX) to become the nation's newest stock exchange, including its famous "speed bump," was one of the SEC's most controversial decisions in decades. Other exchanges have proposed a raft of new innovations in its wake. This evolving equity market is a critical piece of national infrastructure, but the regulatory scheme for its institutions is increasingly frayed. In particular, current regulation draws sharp distinctions among different kinds of markets for trading stocks, treating stock exchanges as self-regulatory organizations immune from private civil litigation, while …

Lead Plaintiffs And Their Lawyers: Mission Accomplished, Or More To Be Done?, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen Choi

Law & Economics Working Papers

This chapter, written for the Research Handbook on Shareholder Litigation, surveys empirical work studying the lead plaintiff provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA). That work finds that the lead plaintiff provision has encouraged institutional investors to participate in securities class actions and that those institutional investors have negotiated lower attorneys' fees. Those benefits from the lead plaintiff provision are undercut, however, by political contributions made by plaintiffs' lawyers. We suggest additional reforms to promote transparency and competition among lawyers for lead plaintiffs. We also suggest reforms to the lead plaintiff provision intended to enhance the screening effect …

Sec Enforcement Attorneys: Should I Stay Of Should I Go?, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi

Law & Economics Working Papers

We examine the career paths of attorneys in the Enforcement Division at the SEC. Using a variety of performance metrics, we find evidence that long term lawyers and lawyers in regional offices do not perform as well as other SEC attorneys. We also report that men and women may differ in their career paths in this field. We find that early-stage female attorneys perform just as well as male attorneys. Notwithstanding their comparable performance, these early-stage women are less likely to get a raise or promotion. We find that women are more likely to stay at the SEC, at least …

The Sec's Shift To Administrative Proceedings: An Empirical Assessment, Stephen J. Choi, Adam C. Prichard

Articles

Congress has repeatedly expanded the authority of the SEC to pursue violations of securities laws in proceedings adjudicated by the SEC's own administrative law judges, most recently through the Dodd-Frank Act. We report the results from an empirical study of SEC enforcement actions against non-financial public companies to assess the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on the balance between civil court and administrative enforcement actions. We show a general decline in the number of court actions and an increase in the number of administrative proceedings post-Dodd-Frank. At the same time, we show an increase in average civil penalties post-Dodd-Frank for …

A Big Gap Between ‘Law In Books’ And ‘Law In Action’ And "A New Taxonomy Of Enforcement Strategies", Robin H. Huang, Nicholas C. Howson

Other Publications

Any attempt to comprehensively analyse the enforcement of corporate law and securities regulation is difficult, not only because there are so many distinct national systems in play, but also because, we need to examine both formal enforcement mechanisms and the way in which such mechanisms are applied in practice. If nothing else, the expert analyses presented in the foregoing chapters of this book confirm that with respect to enforcement issues a rather large gap does exist between what Roscoe Pound memorably called ‘law in books’ and ‘law in action’.

Preface, Robin H. Huang, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

This volume collects the fruits of an unprecedented international academic conference, ‘Public and Private Enforcement of Company Law and Securities Regulation – China and the World’, which was held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in December 2014 and convened by the Centre for Financial Regulation and Economic Development (CFRED) of the Faculty of Law of CUHK, the University of Michigan Law School and the Lieberthal Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. The aim of the conference was to gather, in one place and at one time, some of the world’s top academic specialists, …