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Sandbagging: Default Rules And Acquisition Agreements, Charles K. Whitehead
Sandbagging: Default Rules And Acquisition Agreements, Charles K. Whitehead
Charles K Whitehead
In the M&A world, a buyer "sandbags" a seller when, knowing the seller has materially breached a warranty, it closes the deal and then asserts a post-closing claim. Traditionally, the buyer must have relied on the warranty, without knowledge of the breach, in order to prevail. The modern trend, with some exceptions, permits the buyer to sue without regard to knowledge. Parties, in both cases, can contract around the default rule--so that the default rule should affect how acquisition agreements are structured. Yet, a survey of publicly available deals, from July 2007 to June 2011, reveals that--regardless of default rule--roughly …
Lawyers And Fools: Lawyer-Directors In Public Corporations, Lubomir P. Litov, Simone M. Sepe, Charles K. Whitehead
Lawyers And Fools: Lawyer-Directors In Public Corporations, Lubomir P. Litov, Simone M. Sepe, Charles K. Whitehead
Charles K Whitehead
The accepted wisdom—that a lawyer who becomes a corporate director has a fool for a client—is outdated. The benefits of lawyer-directors in today’s world significantly outweigh the costs. Beyond monitoring, they help manage litigation and regulation, as well as structure compensation to align CEO and shareholder interests. The results have been an average 9.5% increase in firm value and an almost doubling in the percentage of public companies with lawyer-directors. This Article is the first to analyze the rise of lawyer-directors. It makes a variety of other empirical contributions, each of which is statistically significant and large in magnitude. First, …
The Evolution Of Debt: Covenants, The Credit Market, And Corporate Governance, Charles K. Whitehead
The Evolution Of Debt: Covenants, The Credit Market, And Corporate Governance, Charles K. Whitehead
Charles K Whitehead
No abstract provided.
Why Not A Ceo Term Limit?, Charles K. Whitehead
Why Not A Ceo Term Limit?, Charles K. Whitehead
Charles K Whitehead
In this Essay, I ask: Why not require a mandatory CEO term limit? My purpose is not to propose a term limit, but rather to ask why CEO term limits are out-of-bounds – not addressed within the corporate governance scholarship – when they have long been advocated for directors and, more recently, public company auditors. The traditional answer has been that CEOs are agents of the corporation, subject to control by the board, which holds primary responsibility for the firm’s business and affairs. Senior officers are largely shielded from outside interference, permitting them to execute consistent, long-term business strategies under …