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Full-Text Articles in Law
A Necessary Social Evil: The Indispensability Of The Shareholder Value Corporation, Marc T. Moore
A Necessary Social Evil: The Indispensability Of The Shareholder Value Corporation, Marc T. Moore
Seattle University Law Review
This symposium article critically evaluates the developing Post-Shareholder-Value (PSV) paradigm in corporate governance scholarship and practice with particular reference to Professor Colin Mayer’s influential theory of the corporation as a unique, long-term “commitment device.” The article’s positive claim is that, while evolving PSV institutional mechanisms such as benefit corporations and dual-class share structures are generally encouraging from a social perspective, there is cause for skepticism about their capacity to become anything more than a niche or peripheral feature of the U.S. public corporations landscape. This is because such measures, despite their apparent reformist potential, are still ultimately quasi-contractual and thus …
Balancing The Governance Of Financial Institutions, David Min
Balancing The Governance Of Financial Institutions, David Min
Seattle University Law Review
Part I briefly describes the traditional agency–cost approach to corporate governance and the rationale that is offered for elevating the agency–cost concerns of shareholders over those of other stakeholders (especially creditors). But as Part I goes on to argue, even if this justification for shareholder primacy is convincing in corporate governance generally (and there are many who do not find it so), several unique characteristics of banks obviate the reasoning behind shareholder primacy. Banks are highly leveraged, which exacerbates creditor–shareholder agency conflicts and places greater importance on the interests of creditors. Banks enjoy government guarantees, and thus their corporate governance …
Berle Viii: Benefit Corporations And The Firm Commitment Universe, Bart Houlahan, Andrew Kassoy, Jay Coen Gilbert
Berle Viii: Benefit Corporations And The Firm Commitment Universe, Bart Houlahan, Andrew Kassoy, Jay Coen Gilbert
Seattle University Law Review
Benefit corporation law is a critical tool to allow private capital to be invested in a manner that creates shared and durable value for everyone. But a tool is only as good as the person who uses it. As highlighted in Rick Alexander’s essay, shareholders must understand the value of firm commitment, and, more importantly, the ultimate source of wealth for universal investors, which is thriving financial markets and a healthy, peaceful, and prosperous planet. These goals can only be attained and maintained for the long term if private capital is allocated and invested in a manner that creates value …
A Conversation With B Lab, Larry Hamermesh, Bart Houlahan, Rick Alexander, Dan Osusky
A Conversation With B Lab, Larry Hamermesh, Bart Houlahan, Rick Alexander, Dan Osusky
Seattle University Law Review
This is the panel of people who have been associated with B Lab for various lengths of time, but who really can put practical vision and facts before us in a way that the papers we’ve heard so far, while all really interesting, can’t quite do. All of these papers converge on this subject: what actually happens and what’s happened so far. So what I’m going to do is try to lead us through what could be an oral history, if it’s appropriately recorded, of B Lab. And thanks in large part to Rick Alexander, who knows the inside story …