Law Commons^™

The Investor Compensation Fund, Alicia Davis Evans

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

The prevailing view among securities regulation scholars is that compensating victims of secondary market securities fraud is inefficient. As the theory goes, diversified investors are as likely to be on the gaining side of a transaction tainted by fraud as the losing side. Therefore, such investors should have no expected net losses from fraud because their expected losses will be matched by expected gains. This Article argues that this view is flawed; even diversified investors can suffer substantial losses from fraud, presenting a compelling case for compensation.

The interest in compensation, however, should be advanced by better means than are …

The Social Construction Of Sarbanes-Oxley, Donald C. Langevoort

Michigan Law Review

Part I will take a close look at the legitimacy of SOX by examining the two plausible stories of SOX's origins and considering the early post-SOX evidence on its costs and benefits. There is no clear-cut answer to the question of how much SOX benefits investors; both positive and critical positions are plausible. Costs have been far greater than expected, but more from SOX's implementation than from the legislative text. Before turning to how and why implementation has occurred that way-which to me is the central question of interpretation-Part II considers whether there is an alternative interpretation of SOX that …

The Economic Impact Of Backdating Of Executive Stock Options, M. P. Narayanan, Cindi A. Schipani, H. Nejat Seyhun

Michigan Law Review

This Article discusses the economic impact of legal, tax, disclosure, and incentive issues arising from the revelation of dating games with regard to executive option grant dates. It provides an estimate of the value loss incurred by shareholders of firms implicated in backdating and compares it to the potential gain that executives might have obtained through backdating. Using a sample of firms that have already been implicated in backdating, we find that the revelation of backdating results in an average loss to shareholders of about 7%. This translates to about $400 million per firm. By contrast, we estimate that the …

The Corporate Monitor: The New Corporate Czar?, Vikramaditya Khanna, Timothy L. Dickinson

Michigan Law Review

Following the recent spate of corporate scandals, government enforcement authorities have increasingly relied upon corporate monitors to help ensure law compliance and reduce the number of future violations. These monitors also permit enforcement authorities, such as the Securities & Exchange Commission and others, to leverage their enforcement resources in overseeing corporate behavior. However there are few descriptive or normative analyses of the role and scope of corporate monitors. This paper provides such an analysis. After sketching out the historical development of corporate monitors, the paper examines the most common features of the current set of monitor appointments supplemented by interviews …

Getting The Word Out About Fraud: A Theoretical Analysis Of Whistleblowing And Insider Trading, Jonathan Macey

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this Article is to show that corporate whistleblowing is not analytically or functionally distinguishable from insider trading when such trading is based on "whistleblower information," that is, the information a whistleblower might disclose to the authorities. In certain contexts, both insider trading and whistleblowing, if incentivized, would reduce the incidence of corporate pathologies such as fraud and corruption. In light of this analysis, it is peculiar that whistleblowing is encouraged and protected, while insider trading on whistleblower information is not only discouraged but criminalized. Often, insider trading will be far more effective than whistleblowing at bringing fraud …

Reverse Monitoring: On The Hidden Role Of Employee Stock-Based Compensation, Sharon Hannes

Michigan Law Review

This Article develops a new understanding of equity-based compensation schemes, such as employee stock option plans. Current literature views such schemes as a measure aimed at motivating the recipient employees to work harder for the firm. Under that view, this method of remuneration either complements or substitutes for other measures used to monitor the performance of the recipient employees. In contrast, this Article proposes that recipient employees be viewed as potential monitors of other employees and that stock options (or similar types of compensation) motivate them to fulfill this task. This view has many applications and can shed light on …

The Screening Effect Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Stephen Choi, Karen K. Nelson, Adam C. Pritchard

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Prior research shows that the PSLRA increased the significance of merit-related factors, such as the presence of an accounting restatement or insider selling, in determining the incidence and outcomes of securities fraud class actions. (Johnson, Nelson, and Pritchard, 2007). This result, however, is consistent with two possible hypotheses. First, the PSLRA may have reduced solely the incidence of non-meritorious litigation. Second, the PSLRA may have changed the definition of merit, effectively precluding claims that would have survived and produced a settlement pre-PSLRA. This paper tests these alternative hypotheses. We find that pre-PSLRA claims that settled for nuisance value would be …

Stapled Securities--"The Next Big Thing" For Income Trusts? Useful Lessons From The Us Experience With Stapled Shares, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Tim Edgar, Fadi Shaheen

Articles

The Department of Finance has introduced two separate sets of legislation that together attempt to limit demand in the income trust market (though with very different revenue consequences). However, neither the proposed legislation nor the existing Income Tax Act contains an equity recharacterization rule. Consequently, the tax results associated with the standard income trust and royalty trust structures can still be realized with direct holding structures, in which the use of a trust as a pooling mechanism is eliminated and investors hold directly a combination of high-yield junk debt and a specified number of shares of the issuer. Until now, …

The Investor Compensation Fund, Alicia J. Davis

Articles

The prevailing view among securities regulation scholars is that compensating victims of secondary market securities fraud is inefficient. As the theory goes, diversified investors are as likely to be on the gaining side of a transaction tainted by fraud as the losing side. Therefore, such investors should have no expected net losses from fraud because their expected losses will be matched by expected gains. This Article argues that this view is flawed; even diversified investors can suffer substantial losses from fraud, presenting a compelling case for compensation. The interest in compensation, however, should be advanced by better means than are …

Mickey, Can You Spare A Dime? Disneywar, Executive Compensation, Corporate Governance, And Business Law Pedagogy, Kenneth M. Rosen

Michigan Law Review

American business executives are under fire. Recent, notorious difficulties at companies such as the Enron Corporation brought attention to these individuals. Notwithstanding the conclusion of the trials of some of those top executives, skepticism remains about the inner workings of U.S. corporations and the quality of corporate governance. Drawing special scrutiny from some quarters is the compensation granted to corporate officers and directors. For instance, the timing of certain stock option grants, a key component of some compensation packages, raised ire because of those options' supposed backdating and fortuitous proximity to increases in share prices. Further, some questioned more generally …

Fixing 404, Joseph A. Grundfest, Steven E. Bochner

Michigan Law Review

Although debate persists as to whether the costs of Sarbanes-Oxley's Section 404 regulations exceed their benefits, there is broad consensus that the rules have been inefficiently implemented. Substantive and procedural factors contribute to the rules' inefficiency. From a substantive perspective, the terms "material weakness" and "significant deficiency" are central to the implementing regulations and are easily interpreted to legitimize audits of controls that have only a remote probability of causing an inconsequential effect on the issuer's financial statements. As a quantitative matter the literature suggests that a control with a remote probability of causing an inconsequential effect has an expected …

A Business Ethics Perspective On Sarbanes-Oxley And The Organizational Sentencing Guidelines, David Hess

Michigan Law Review

This Article assesses the ability of Sarbanes-Oxley and other recent changes in the law and stock exchange listing requirements to reduce the incidence of fraud and to increase the reporting of financial misconduct. It begins by examining the individual decision-makers within a corporation and analyzing their intentions and behaviors under the Theory of Planned Behavior. It then examines the ability of the organization to influence the employees' intentions and behaviors through codes of ethics and compliance programs, and finds growing support for the usefulness of integrity based compliance programs. Finally, the Article considers how the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and Organizational Sentencing …

Sarbanes-Oxley And The Cross-Listing Premium, Kate Litvak

Michigan Law Review

This article tests whether the Sarbanes-Oxley Act ("SOX") affected the premium that investors are willing to pay for shares of foreign companies cross-listed in the United States. I find that from year-end 2001 (pre-SOX) to year-end 2002 (after SOX adoption), the Tobin's q and market/book ratios of foreign companies subject to SOX (cross-listed on levels 2 or 3) declined significantly, relative to Tobin's q and market/book ratios of both (i) matching non-cross-listed foreign companies from the same country, the same industry, and of similar size, and (ii) cross-listed companies from the same country that are not subject to SOX (listed …

Insider Trading Laws And Stock Markets Around The World: An Empirical Contribution To The Theoretical Law And Economics Debate, Laura Nyantung Beny

Articles

The primary goal of this Article is to bring empirical evidence to bear on the heretofore largely theoretical law and economics debate about insider trading. The Article first summarizes various agency, market, and contractual (or "Coasian") theories of insider trading propounded over the course of this longstanding debate. The Article then proposes three testable hypotheses regarding the relationship between insider trading laws and several measures of stock market performance. Exploiting the natural variation of international data, the Article finds that more stringent insider trading laws are generally associated with more dispersed equity ownership, greater stock price accuracy and greater stock …

Insider Trading Rules Can Affect Attractiveness Of Country's Stock Markets, Laura Nyantung Beny

Articles

The academic debate about the desirability of prohibiting insider trading is longstanding and as yet unresolved. Until Henry Manne’s 1966 book, Insider Trading and the Stock Market, the debate centered on whether insider trading is unfair to public investors who are not privy to private corporate information. However, the fairness approach is malleable and indeterminate and thus does not lend itself to clear-cut policy prescriptions. Since Manne’s book, the focus of the debate has been on the effect of insider trading on economic efficiency. Manne argued that, contrary to the prevailing legal and moral opinion of the time, insider trading …