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Full-Text Articles in Law
Copyright Infringement Markets, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Copyright Infringement Markets, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Faculty Scholarship
Should copyright infringement claims be treated as marketable assets? Copyright law has long emphasized the free and independent alienability of its exclusive rights. Yet, the right to sue for infringement – which copyright law grants authors in order to render its exclusive rights operational – has never been thought of as independently assignable, or indeed as the target of investments by third parties. As a result, discussions of copyright law and policy rarely consider the possibility of an acquisition or investment market emerging for actionable copyright claims and the advantages that such a market might hold for copyright’s goals, objectives, …
The Agency Costs Of Agency Capitalism: Activist Investors And The Revaluation Of Governance Rights, Ronald J. Gilson, Jeffrey N. Gordon
The Agency Costs Of Agency Capitalism: Activist Investors And The Revaluation Of Governance Rights, Ronald J. Gilson, Jeffrey N. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
Equity ownership in the United States no longer reflects the dispersed share ownership of the canonical Berle-Means firm. Instead, we observe the reconcentration of ownership in the hands of institutional investment intermediaries, which gives rise to "the agency costs of agency capitalism." This ownership change has occurred because of (i) political decisions to privatize the provision of retirement savings and to require funding of such provision and (ii) capital market developments that favor investment intermediaries offering low-cost diversified investment vehicles. A new set of agency costs arises because in addition to divergence between the interests of record owners and the …
A Private Ordering Solution To Blockholder Disclosure, Joshua Mitts
A Private Ordering Solution To Blockholder Disclosure, Joshua Mitts
Faculty Scholarship
The recent debate over reforming the Securities Exchange Act section 13(d) ten-day filing window demonstrates the importance of balancing the costs and benefits of delayed blockholder disclosure. While hedge fund activism may create shareholder value, short-termism is a very real problem for firms today. Rather than a rigid mandatory rule, the duration of the blockholder disclosure window should be set through a shareholder amendment to the corporate bylaws that empowers shareholders to set an optimal maximum length for each firm. To internalize the economic and moral costs to society of permitting trading on asymmetric information, the SEC should impose a …
Constraints On Private Benefits Of Control: Ex Ante Control Mechanisms Versus Ex Post Transaction Review, Ronald J. Gilson, Alan Schwartz
Constraints On Private Benefits Of Control: Ex Ante Control Mechanisms Versus Ex Post Transaction Review, Ronald J. Gilson, Alan Schwartz
Faculty Scholarship
We ask how to regulate pecuniary private benefit consumption. These benefits can compensate controlling shareholders for monitoring managers and investing effort in implementing projects. Controlling shareholders may consume excessive benefits, however. We argue (a) ex post judicial review of controlled transactions dominates ex ante restrictions on the controlled structures: the latter eliminate efficiencies along with abuses of the controlled company form; (b) controlling shareholders should be permitted to contract with investors over private benefit levels. Both work with better courts. Hence, we recommend creating a European-level corporate court, whose jurisdiction parties can invoke by contract.
Agency Capitalism: Further Implications Of Equity Intermediation, Ronald J. Gilson, Jeffrey N. Gordon
Agency Capitalism: Further Implications Of Equity Intermediation, Ronald J. Gilson, Jeffrey N. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
This chapter continues our examination of the corporate law and governance implications of the fundamental shift in ownership structure of U.S. public corporations from the Berle-Means pattern of widely distributed shareholders to one of Agency Capitalism – the reconcentration of ownership in intermediary institutional investors as record holders for their beneficial owners. A Berle-Means ownership distribution provided the foundation for the agency cost orientation of modern corporate law and governance – the goal was to bridge the gap between the interests of managers and shareholders that dispersed shareholders could not do for themselves. The equity intermediation of the last 30 …