Law Commons^™

Bargaining Inequality: Employee Golden Handcuffs And Asymmetric Information, Anat Alon-Beck

Faculty Publications

Inaccurate unicorn firm valuation is a well-documented problem in the finance literature. Employees of these large, privately held companies do not have access to fair market valuation or financial statements and, in many cases, are denied access to such reports, even when requested. Unicorn employees are granted equity as a substantial part of their compensation, however due to the inferior position of employees in comparison to the start-up founders and other investors, information shedding light on the value of their equity grants has been withheld, as apparent in recent practices.

Start-up founders, investors, and their lawyers have systematically abused equity …

Investment Bankers As Underwriters: Barbarians Or Gatekeepers? A Response To Brent Horton On Direct Listings, Anat Alon-Beck, Robert N. Rapp, John Livingstone

Faculty Publications

Direct listing clearly has the potential to meaningfully disrupt the IPO process. Changes to permit primary offerings via direct listing will help private companies to overcome some of the obstacles imposed by our securities laws and listing rules. Primary offerings by direct listing would allow for a dramatic increase in efficiency in public offerings, providing further incentive for private companies to finally provide liquidity to their shareholders while saving on the tremendous cost associated with a more traditional IPO by eliminating the need for underwriters.

Despite the positive impacts that direct listings will have on the IPO process, in their …

Reconsidering Hostile Takeover Of Religious Organizations, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

Beginning in 2016, the headlines of major publications began announcing that Donald Trump had successfully completed a “hostile takeover” of the Republican Party. Whether this appraisal is accurate or not, it reflects concern about the associational integrity of a voluntary private organization—the Republican Party—and it suggests that some forms of organizational transformation are problematic. Moreover, the same concern might arise regarding other private associations, including religious associations. Yet, given that some transformation is inevitable and universal within religious and other voluntary organizations, it would be unwarranted to assume that all change within a religious organization is necessarily problematic.

This Article …