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2021

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

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Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Coming Shift In Shareholder Activism: From “Firm-Specific” To “Systematic Risk” Proxy Campaigns (And How To Enable Them), John C. Coffee, Jr. Dec 2021

The Coming Shift In Shareholder Activism: From “Firm-Specific” To “Systematic Risk” Proxy Campaigns (And How To Enable Them), John C. Coffee, Jr.

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This article distinguishes two types of shareholder activism: (1) firm-specific activism, which has a long history and focuses on changes at a specific target company, and (2) systematic risk activism, which seeks to reduce the systematic risk in a portfolio and thereby benefit diversified investors. Typically, such a systematic risk campaign may force a portfolio company to internalize negative externalities to benefit the other companies in the portfolio (such as by reducing carbon emissions or undertaking climate risk reforms). But, systematic risk activism faces an inherent difficulty: the party that leads this campaign and invests in the target company may …

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Mutual Fund Stewardship And The Empty Voting Problem, Jill E. Fisch Dec 2021

Mutual Fund Stewardship And The Empty Voting Problem, Jill E. Fisch

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

When Roberta Karmel wrote the articles that are the subject of this symposium, she was skeptical of the potential value of shareholder voting and the emerging involvement of institutional investors in corporate governance. In the ensuring years, both the increased role and engagement of institutional investors and the heightened importance of shareholder voting offer new reasons to take Professor Karmel’s concerns seriously. Institutional investors have taken on a broader range of issues from diversity and political spending to climate change and human capital management, and their ability to influence corporate policy on these issues has become more significant. The broadened …

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Roberta Karmel And The "Brooklyn School", Edward J. Janger Dec 2021

Roberta Karmel And The "Brooklyn School", Edward J. Janger

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

In this contribution, Professor Janger describes Roberta Karmel’s extraordinary contributions to the intellectual, scholarly, and institutional life of Brooklyn Law School.

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Karmel’S Dissent: The Sec’S Use And Occasional Misuse Of Section 21(A) Reports Of Investigation, James J. Park Dec 2021

Karmel’S Dissent: The Sec’S Use And Occasional Misuse Of Section 21(A) Reports Of Investigation, James J. Park

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Section 21(a) of the Securities Exchange Act gives the SEC the option of publishing a report of its findings after conducting an investigation. Typically, the SEC issues such reports about once a year to highlight major compliance and enforcement issues. This Article examines the SEC’s use of Section 21(a) investigative reports with special attention to its 1979 report in Spartek, where Commissioner Roberta Karmel filed a famous dissent. In that opinion, she argued that the report effectively sanctioned conduct over which the SEC did not have jurisdiction and that Spartek did not have sufficient notice of its regulatory obligations. While …

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“The Eu Challenge To The Sec”: A View From 2021, Howell E. Jackson Dec 2021

“The Eu Challenge To The Sec”: A View From 2021, Howell E. Jackson

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This essay offers a retrospective appreciation of Professor Roberta Karmel’s scholarship exploring the influence of securities regulation in the United States on developments in European capital markets regulation in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Professor Karmel’s writings document a fascinating evolution in this trans-Atlantic relationship as the Securities and Exchange Commission transitioned from the world’s dominant capital market regulator throughout most of the post-World War II era into a more collaborative posture by the end of the first decade of the Millennium. The essay concludes by suggesting that the trends that Professor Karmel chronicled in her scholarship have persisted …

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Federalized Corporate Governance: The Dream Of William O. Douglas As Sarbanes-Oxley Turns 20, Joan Macleod Heminway Dec 2021

Federalized Corporate Governance: The Dream Of William O. Douglas As Sarbanes-Oxley Turns 20, Joan Macleod Heminway

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The federalization of U.S. corporate governance has been a topic of conversation among policymakers from the very beginning of federal securities law in the New Deal era. Among the early proponents of a federalized system of corporate governance oversight was William O. Douglas—perhaps best known as the longest-serving U.S. Supreme Court justice, but who also was a former commissioner and chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Reflecting on Douglas’s federal corporate governance ideas, Professor Roberta Karmel wrote a law review article for the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, published in 2005, commenting on the extent and nature of …

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Looking Forward: Professor Roberta Karmel’S Prescient Views On The Transformation Of Self-Regulatory Organizations And Of The Securities Market Structure At The Turn Of The Last Century, James A. Fanto Dec 2021

Looking Forward: Professor Roberta Karmel’S Prescient Views On The Transformation Of Self-Regulatory Organizations And Of The Securities Market Structure At The Turn Of The Last Century, James A. Fanto

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This essay examines Professor Roberta Karmel’s scholarship on the transformation of self-regulatory organizations (SROs) and the securities market structure, a transformation that occurred at the turn of the last century. It explains how she examined the events from the perspective of a lawyer who had a rich knowledge of the history of the SROs, the securities markets, and their regulation and how she provided a practical understanding of the way these markets worked. It points out that, rather than offering an overarching theory that would explain all of these developments and that would guide regulators and legislators in SRO and …

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Full Of Questions And Wonder: Roberta Karmel's Legacy, Alan R. Palmiter Dec 2021

Full Of Questions And Wonder: Roberta Karmel's Legacy, Alan R. Palmiter

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Roberta Karmel has been perhaps the keenest observer and commentator on the securities industry and its regulation for the past five decades. Her observations about securities regulation—during the SEC’s precocious adolescence and into its young adulthood—have framed the academic inquiry of all of us who have written on the subject during this period. But more valuable to us than her observations have been her questions, full of wonder and penetrating insight. We securities academics, the enterprise of securities regulation, and especially market capitalism, all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Professor Karmel.

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Not So Fair Use: The Shortcomings Of Current Copyright Law In Music Sampling, Marissa Brown May 2021

Not So Fair Use: The Shortcomings Of Current Copyright Law In Music Sampling, Marissa Brown

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The current enforcement method of the fair use doctrine is not suitable to handle the ever-evolving music industry. The fair use doctrine allows a copyright protected work to be used without getting it approved by the original owner of the work. This is seen often in music sampling. Music sampling is extremely prevalent in today’s music industry; however, federal court is currently the only arena that sampling disputes can be resolved in. This has led to inconsistencies across circuits, unfairness, and exacerbated the backlog of the federal court docket. While many have pointed out both the inefficiency and unfairness of …

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Telling The Story On Your Timesheets: A Fee Examiner's Tips For Creditors' Lawyers And Bankruptcy Estate Professionals, Nancy B. Rapoport May 2021

Telling The Story On Your Timesheets: A Fee Examiner's Tips For Creditors' Lawyers And Bankruptcy Estate Professionals, Nancy B. Rapoport

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This short (approx. 5,000 words) essay, which forms the basis of a keynote address to the Federal Bar Association that I’m doing next month, discusses how much of a lawyer’s embedded assumptions and cognitive errors can come across in something as simple as a time entry on a bill. So much can be revealed about how a lawyer views himself or herself in society and about the lawyer’s relationship with the client that it’s worth examining what we can find when we look at legal bills. One note, though: my writing style is informal and distinctive in that regard (especially …

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A Rejection Of Absolutist Duties As A Barrier To Creditor Protection: Facilitating Directorial Decisivness Surrounding Insolvency Through The Business Judgment Rule, Philip Gavin May 2021

A Rejection Of Absolutist Duties As A Barrier To Creditor Protection: Facilitating Directorial Decisivness Surrounding Insolvency Through The Business Judgment Rule, Philip Gavin

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Article draws attention to the difficulties that directors may face when seeking to discharge their duties as a corporation approaches insolvency, in particular when directors must discern the point at which a corporation has become insolvent. It argues that discretion allowed to directors by the business judgment rule will be crucial to overcoming these difficulties. To do this, this article examines the nature of duties owed by directors both before and after insolvency, and accepts the stance taken by Delaware courts in recent years towards an expansive understanding of a corporation’s interests upon insolvency. It then considers unresolved issues …

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Qualified Opportunity Funds: Private Equity Exemptions From Public Responsibility, Audrey E. Abate May 2021

Qualified Opportunity Funds: Private Equity Exemptions From Public Responsibility, Audrey E. Abate

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The historic Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), passed and signed into law in 2017, included a pilot program of a new kind of tax advantage: the Qualified Opportunity Zone. The obscure provision has since spawned novel investment vehicles, called Qualified Opportunity Funds, through which qualified individuals and entities participate in what are often significant tax advantages, including deferral of capital gains for up to ten years. Because Qualified Opportunity Funds have come into existence so recently, regulation has been slow to catch up to the ways in which this tax program is rapidly attracting capital from private equity, investment …

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Proxy Advisors As Issue Spotters, Douglas Sarro May 2021

Proxy Advisors As Issue Spotters, Douglas Sarro

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

When institutional investors hire proxy advisors to prepare reports on matters up for vote at public company shareholder meetings, are they interested primarily in acquiring a bottom-line recommendation on how to vote, on which they can then blindly rely? Or in acquiring information that will help them make their own voting decisions? Supporters of controversial reforms introduced by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2019 and 2020 gravitate toward the former position, arguing that reform is needed to discourage undue reliance on proxy advisor recommendations. Opponents gravitate toward the latter position, arguing that additional regulation generally is unnecessary given …

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Looking For A Silver Lining: How The Covid-19 Pandemic Forced New York To Reckon With Its Affordable Housing Crisis, Daniel Finnegan May 2021

Looking For A Silver Lining: How The Covid-19 Pandemic Forced New York To Reckon With Its Affordable Housing Crisis, Daniel Finnegan

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Since the Great Depression, the United States government has failed to find an adequate remedy to a nationwide housing shortage amongst low- and moderate-income individuals and families. The COVID-19 public health crisis has exacerbated this ongoing, nation-wide housing crisis, and has highlighted the racial inequities present in our housing market. Furthermore, it has pushed New York State’s residential housing market into a uniquely precarious position. Dramatic legislation is required at the state level to address the housing crisis caused by the massive growth in income-insecure and housing-insecure individuals that resulted from the pandemic, as well as the widespread departure of …

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Reducing Conflicts Of Interest: A "Glass-Steagall" Split Of Advisory And Consulting Services Of Proxy Advisory Firms, Austin Manna May 2021

Reducing Conflicts Of Interest: A "Glass-Steagall" Split Of Advisory And Consulting Services Of Proxy Advisory Firms, Austin Manna

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Note explores a solution to the potential problem with proxy advisory firms that involves an inherent conflict of interest arising from the structure of two services—advisory and consulting services—offered at certain proxy advisory firms in the United States. The solution proposed in this paper applies a Glass-Steagall framework to breakup these two services of the proxy advisory firms. In theory, this would eliminate the inherent conflicts of interest.

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The Commodification Of Personal Data And The Road To Consumer Autonomy Through The Ccpa, Blaire Rose May 2021

The Commodification Of Personal Data And The Road To Consumer Autonomy Through The Ccpa, Blaire Rose

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The internet has transformed into a museum of personal information collected through the digital footprint we leave behind after each act performed on the web. Businesses have monetized this collection of personal data in various ways. For instance, many companies analyze this information through predicting analytics and data profiling to identify consumer interests that they can exploit as a means to generate revenue. Though user data promotes many benefits for businesses and consumers alike, the recent data breaches of massive companies, coupled with hazy privacy disclosures that beget consent disputes, have left both users and businesses perturbed and exposed to …

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Let's Stop Playing Games: Why Better Congressional Interaction Is Required To Protect Young Gamers, Dominick Tarantino May 2021

Let's Stop Playing Games: Why Better Congressional Interaction Is Required To Protect Young Gamers, Dominick Tarantino

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Note addresses the predatory nature of video game microtransactions, the serious risks they pose, and why an improved plan of legislative intervention is necessary to protect young, vulnerable video game consumers. With loot box microtransactions driving a flourishing industry that has reached unprecedented levels of success, adequate consumer protection cannot properly be achieved through self-regulation. Senator Josh Hawley’s Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act is a step in the right direction, but its broad language will result in unintended consequences that can cripple the entire industry. Revising the bill’s language will protect the intended young consumer and allow for …

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