Law Commons^™

Counselor, Gatekeeper, Shareholder, Thief: Why Attorneys Who Invest In Their Clients In A Post-Enron World Are "Selling Out," Not "Buying In,", A. Christine Hurt

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Thin Line Between Love And Hate: Why Affinity-Based Securities And Investment Fraud Constitutes A Hate Crime, Lisa M. Fairfax

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the parallels between the prototypical hate crime and affinity fraud—securities and investment fraud that targets identifiable religious, racial and ethnic groups—and asserts that those parallels justify treating affinity fraud as a hate crime.

The Evolution Of Corporate Governance, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reconciling Federal And State Interest In Securities Regulation In The United States And Europe, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Regulating Corporations: Who's Making The Rules, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Making Markets: Network Effects And The Role Of Law In The Creation Of Strong Securities Markets, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

As Russia and other formerly socialist states construct market economies, the appearance of strong securities markets remains an unfulfilled expectation. Notwithstanding broad privatization of state-owned enterprises and the elimination of industrial subsidies - essential precursors to demand for capital-raising securities markets - stock markets in Central and Eastern Europe remain illiquid, inefficient, and unreliable.

Strong securities markets do not, it seems, neatly follow from the welfare-maximizing behavior of individuals and institutions. Nor can the appearance of securities markets be effectively dictated by government decree. Post-communist securities market transition therefore presents a puzzle: Do markets emerge, or must they be created? …

Double Dipping: The Cross-Border Taxation Of Stock Options, Jeffrey M. Colon

Faculty Scholarship

Once awarded exclusively to upper management, stock options are now granted increasingly to rank-and-file employees and are becoming a greater component of employee compensation. The expanding use of stock options is undoubtedly due in part to the large increase in equity prices over the last twenty years. Further fueling the demand was the Internet start-up boom of the late 1990s, the spectacular financial success of many technology and computer companies, notably Microsoft and Oracle, and the well- publicized lucre acquired by their employees. The collapse of the initial public offerings market for Internet start-up companies at the dawn of the …

Spinning And Underpricing: A Legal And Economic Analysis Of The Preferential Allocation Of Shares In Initial Public Offerings , Sean J. Griffith

Faculty Scholarship

This Article investigates the preferential allocation, or “spinning,” of shares in initial public offerings. It begins by examining the offering process and the incentives of underwriters, issuers, and investors. Through this examination of the participants and the process, it locates the harm of spinning in the underpricing of initial public offerings. The Article then seeks to identify precisely which participants in the offering process are harmed by the practice and finally evaluates the most appropriate means of addressing this harm.

Book Review, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing Cross Border Collateral: Legal Risks and the Conflict of Laws (R. Potok ed., 2002).

Understanding Venture Capital Structure: A Tax Explanation For Convertible Preferred Stock, Ronald J. Gilson, David M. Schizer

Faculty Scholarship

The capital structures of venture capital-backed U.S. companies share a remarkable commonality: overwhelmingly, venture capitalists make their investments through convertible preferred stock. Not surprisingly, much of the academic literature on venture capital has sought to explain this peculiar pattern. Financial economists have developed models showing, for example, that convertible securities efficiently allocate control between the investor and entrepreneur,signal the entrepreneur's talent and motivation, and align the incentives of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

In this Article, we examine the influence of a more mundane factor on venture capital structure: tax law. Portfolio companies issue convertible preferred stock to achieve more favorable …

Optimal Regulatory Areas For Securities Disclosure, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

The corporate governance scandals of 2003 have brought renewed focus on mandatory disclosure. One of the most fundamental questions relating to this kind of regulation is the choice of regulatory area. The United States initially faced this question in the 1930s when, after intense debate, it decided to move from an exclusively state-based system to one primarily relying on federal regulation. It is a hot issue today as well. The countries of Europe, for example, are currently deciding the extent to which the European Community, rather than its member states, should determine securities disclosure in Europe. Canada is deciding whether …

Law, Share Price Accuracy And Economic Performance: The New Evidence, Merritt B. Fox, Randall Morck, Bernard Yeung, Artyom Durnev

Faculty Scholarship

Mandatory disclosure has been at the core of U.S. securities regulation since its adoption in the early 1930s. For many decades, this fixture of our financial system was accepted with little examination. Over the last twenty years, however, mandatory disclosure has been subject to intensifying intellectual crosscurrents. Some commentators hold out the U.S. system as the standard for the world. They argue that adoption by other countries of a U.S.-styled system, with its greater corporate transparency, would enhance their economic performance. Other commentators, in contrast, insist that the U.S. mandatory disclosure regime represents a mistake, not a model. These crosscurrents …

The Mechanisms Of Market Efficiency Twenty Years Later: The Hindsight Bias, Ronald J. Gilson, Reinier Kraakman

Faculty Scholarship

Twenty years ago we published a paper, "The Mechanisms of Market Efficiency," that sought to describe the institutional underpinnings of price formation in the securities market. Since that time, financial economics has moved forward on many fronts. The sub-discipline of behavioral finance has struggled to bring yet more descriptive realism to the study of financial markets. Two important questions are (1) how much has this new discipline changed our understanding of the efficiency and nature of the institutional mechanisms that set price in financial markets; and (2) how far does this discipline carry novel implications for the regulation of financial …

Frictions And Tax-Motivated Hedging: An Empirical Exploration Of Publicly-Traded Exchangeable Securities, William M. Gentry, David M. Schizer

Faculty Scholarship

As financial engineering becomes more sophisticated, taxing income from capital becomes increasingly difficult. We offer the first empirical study of a high profile strategy known as "taxfree hedging," which offers economic benefits of a sale without tnggering tax. We explore nontax costs that taxpayers face when hedging by issuing so-called "DECS," "PHONES," and other publicly-traded exchangeable securities. Focusing on 61 transactions between 1993 and 2001, we shed light on why taxpayers might prefer to hedge through private "over-the-counter" transactions: An offering of exchangeable securities is announced in advance and implemented all at once, triggering an almost 4 percent decline in …

Governance Failures Of The Enron Board And The New Information Order Of Sarbanes-Oxley, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Analysis of the corporate governance crisis that manifested itself in the United States at the turn of the millennium requires separating its various strands. The Enron Corporation ("Enron") debacle and the dot corn bubble and collapse, for example, share some common elements but in other ways they are quite different. In both cases investors became aggressively enamored of an unsustainable business model. In the dot com case it was the belief that an innovator in a rapidly growing market could attain powerful first mover advantages that would produce an eventual cascade of profits, so that a current and increasing stream …