Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Rise And Rise Of The One Percent: Getting To Thomas Piketty's Wealth Dystopia, Shi-Ling Hsu
The Rise And Rise Of The One Percent: Getting To Thomas Piketty's Wealth Dystopia, Shi-Ling Hsu
Shi-Ling Hsu
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-first Century, which is surely one of the very few economics treatises ever to be a best-seller, has parachuted into an intensely emotional and deeply divisive American debate: the problem of inequality in the United States. Piketty's core argument is that throughout history, the rate of return on private capital has usually exceeded the rate of economic growth, expressed by Piketty as the relation r > g. If true, this relation means that the wealthy class – who are the predominant owners of capital – will grow their wealth faster than economies grow, which …
Controlling Shareholders: Benevolent “King” Or Ruthless “Pirate”, Sang Yop Kang
Controlling Shareholders: Benevolent “King” Or Ruthless “Pirate”, Sang Yop Kang
Sang Yop Kang
Unfair self-dealing and expropriation of minority shareholders by a controlling shareholder are common business practices in developing countries (“bad-law countries”). Although controlling shareholder agency problems have been well studied so far, there are many questions unanswered in relation to behaviors and motivations of controlling shareholders. For example, a puzzle is that some controlling shareholders in bad-law countries voluntarily extract minority shareholders less than other controlling shareholders. Applying Mancur Olson’s framework of political theory of “banditry” to the context of corporate governance, this Article proposes that there are at least two categories of controlling shareholders. “Roving controllers” are dominant shareholders with …
Too Complex To Perceive?: Drafting Cash Distribution Waterfalls Directly As Code To Reduce Complexity And Legal Risk In Structured Finance, Master Limited Partnership, And Private Equity Transactions, Ralph Carter Mayrell
Ralph Carter Mayrell
The intricate procedural and data-driven decision trees that play a critical role in complex financial contracts like cash distribution waterfalls in structured finance agreement indentures (e.g., collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)), master limited partnership agreements, and private equity fund agreements are inefficiently depicted as written contracts. As Professor Henry Hu explains in Too Complex to Depict?, the difficulty of translation—or depiction—between original mathematical models, plain English prospectuses, legal contracts, and programmed execution means that often the written depictions that form the basis of disclosures do not accurately define the act of execution. To overcome this, the SEC proposed an amendment to …
Present At The Creation: Reflections On The Early Years Of The National Association Of Corporate Directors, Lawrence J. Trautman
Present At The Creation: Reflections On The Early Years Of The National Association Of Corporate Directors, Lawrence J. Trautman
Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.
Effective corporate governance is critical to the productive operation of the global economy and preservation of our way of life. Excellent governance execution is also required to achieve economic growth and robust job creation in any country. In the United States, the premier director membership organization is the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). Now over 36 years old, NACD plays a major role in fostering excellence in corporate governance in the United States and beyond. Over the past thirty-six years NACD has grown from a mere realization of the importance of corporate governance to become the only national membership …
Rise Of The Intercontinentalexchange And Implications Of Its Merger With Nyse Euronext, Latoya C. Brown
Rise Of The Intercontinentalexchange And Implications Of Its Merger With Nyse Euronext, Latoya C. Brown
Latoya C. Brown, Esq.
This paper examines the impending merger between the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) and NYSE Euronext against the backdrop of the current structure of the global financial services industry. The paper concludes that the merger embodies what the financial services industry is becoming and captures the model that will allow exchanges to remain competitive in today’s marketplace: mega-exchanges with broader asset classes and electronic platforms. As technology and globalization threaten their vitality, exchanges will need to continue reinventing and adapting. Increasingly over the last decade they have done so by merging and by moving, at least a part of, their operations on screen. …
Chinese Reverse Mergers, Accounting Regimes, And The Rule Of Law In China, Benjamin A. Templin
Chinese Reverse Mergers, Accounting Regimes, And The Rule Of Law In China, Benjamin A. Templin
Benjamin A. Templin
In 2010, federal regulators and politicians became increasingly concerned over the accounting practices of Chinese companies that trade on U.S. stock exchanges. In particular, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) targeted companies that went public through a process called the reverse merger. The instances of fraud became so widespread, regulators and commentators coined the term Chinese Reverse Merger (“CRM”) in order to describe a sector where investors assume the risk of accounting irregularities. Although CRMs must comply with international accounting standards, a weak rule of law in China has resulted in poor implementation and enforcement of its accounting regime. U.S. …
Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac: Creatures Of Regulatory Privilege, David J. Reiss
Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac: Creatures Of Regulatory Privilege, David J. Reiss
David J Reiss
This book chapter addresses the appropriate role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-chartered, privately owned mortgage finance companies, in the United States housing finance sector. The federal government recently placed Fannie and Freddie in conservatorship. These two massive companies are profit-driven, but as government-sponsored enterprises they also have a government-mandated mission to provide liquidity and stability to the United States mortgage market and to achieve certain affordable housing goals. How the two companies should exit their conservatorship has implications that reach throughout the global financial markets and are of key importance to the future of American housing finance …
The Effects Of Devaluation Of The Tenge Upon The Kazakhstan Economy, John Ja Burke
The Effects Of Devaluation Of The Tenge Upon The Kazakhstan Economy, John Ja Burke
John JA Burke
This article examines the probable effect of the February 2009 devaluation of the Tenge on the Kazakhstan economy. Conventional wisdom holds that currency devaluation increases exports, protects domestic production, and preserves foreign exchange currency reserves. While the latter states the obvious, the causal relation between currency devaluation and increased export revenue and increased domestic production, though logically valid, requires the passage of time to measure. In the context of Kazakhstan, the question of devaluation and its effects also must be examined within the “Dutch Disease” model, as Kazakhstan is an oil dependent country. History teaches that devaluing the Tenge is …