Law Commons^™

Proxy Access And Optimal Standardization In Corporate Governance: An Empirical Analysis, Reilly S. Steel

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

According to the conventional wisdom, “one size does not fit all” in corporate governance. Firms are heterogeneous with respect to their governance needs, implying that the optimal corporate governance structure must also vary from firm to firm. This one-size-does-not-fit-all axiom has featured prominently in arguments against numerous corporate law regulatory initiatives, including the SEC’s failed Rule 14a-11—an attempt to impose mandatory, uniform “proxy access” on all public companies—which the D.C. Circuit struck down for inadequate cost–benefit analysis.

This Article presents an alternative theory as to the role of standardization in corporate governance—in which investors prefer standardized terms—and empirical …

Evaluating Financial Integration And Cooperation In The Asean, Brendan Harvey

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Financial integration is less pronounced in the ASEAN than other mea-sures of economic integration. This is particularly apparent when com-pared against other regions that have undergone similar integrative efforts, such as the European Union. Cross-border trade flows, foreign-direct in-vestment, and investment in capital goods outstrip other investment flows. Regional institutional and legal structures governing these investment flows, while limited, present marked achievements towards creating an ASEAN financial community. The gap persists despite suggestions that the Asian Financial Crisis and the Global Financial Crisis (or the North Atlan-tic Financial Crisis from the Asian and Stiglitz perspective) would acceler-ate financial regionalism as …

The Government’S Role In Unleashing Impact Investing’S Full Potential, Chelsea Mcgrath

Pepperdine Law Review

Impact investing refers to investments made in organizations, companies, or funds with the intent to generate measurable social or environmental impact along with a financial return. Since its start in 2008, this industry has become a vibrant tool to address a wide variety of local and global issues, resulting in higher standards of living, lower rates of prison recidivism, clean technology and more. Impact investing is no longer a novel concept. Rather, it has successfully pushed the boundaries from the separate methods of conventional investing and philanthropy, blending them together to create sustainable solutions to social and environmental problems. By …

Regulating A Revolution: From Regulatory Sandboxes To Smart Regulation, Dirk A. Zetzsche, Ross P. Buckley, Janos N. Barberis, Douglas W. Arner

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Prior to the global financial crisis, financial innovation was viewed very positively, resulting in a laissez-faire, deregulatory approach to financial regulation. Since the crisis the regulatory pendulum has swung to the other extreme. Post-crisis regulation, plus rapid technological change, have spurred the development of financial technology (FinTech). FinTech firms and data-driven financial service providers profoundly challenge the current regulatory paradigm. Financial regulators increasingly seek to balance the traditional regulatory objectives of financial stability and consumer protection with promoting growth and innovation. The resulting regulatory innovations include RegTech, regulatory sandboxes, and special charters. This Article analyzes possible new regulatory approaches, ranging …

Leidos And The Roberts Court's Improvident Securities Law Docket, Matthew C. Turk, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

For its October 2017 term, the U.S. Supreme Court took up a noteworthy securities law case, Leidos, Inc. v. Indiana Public Retirement System. The legal question presented in Leidos was whether a failure to comply with a regulation issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Item 303 of Regulation S-K (Item 303), can be grounds for a securities fraud claim pursuant to Rule 10b-5 and the related Section 10(b) of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Leidos teed up a significant set of issues because Item 303 concerns one of the more controversial corporate disclosures mandated by the SEC—an …

Mutual Fund Capital Structure, A. Joseph Warburton

Marquette Law Review

The Investment Company Act of 1940 regulates the capital structure of mutual funds in order to restrain their leverage and speculative character. It is often (mistakenly) assumed that the law prohibits open-end mutual funds from borrowing money. This Article (I) analyzes the law governing mutual fund capital structure to reveal when (and to what extent) borrowing is allowed and (ii) examines a novel dataset on mutual fund capital structure that shows borrowing is an unexpectedly common practice.

Using data on all registered investment companies in the U.S. from 1998 to 2013, I find that nearly 8% of open-end mutual funds, …

Financial Reform: Making The System Safer And Fairer, Michael S. Barr

Articles

In the fall of 2008, the financial crisis crushed the U.S. economy and plunged the country into the Great Recession. The crisis shuttered American businesses, cost millions of Americans their jobs, and wiped out home values and household savings. The macro effects hit hardest and were the longest lasting for those least able to bear the brunt of the crisis. It was devastating to middle-income families and perhaps even more so to low- and moderate-income households, who had little financial buffer (Barr 2012a). Financial stability, never robust for these families, dropped precipitously (Barr and Schaffa 2016). Both in the United …

Conceptualizing Cryptolaw, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Sweden transfers its real property recording system to the blockchain, a software protocol that enables public, cryptographically secure transaction verification without reliance upon a trusted third party. Dubai plans to issue blockchain-based government documents. The United States Department of Health and Human Services investigates blockchain-based systems for managing health data. Illinois explores blockchain-based applications for use in the Illinois government. News of governments and public-private partnerships developing blockchain-based legal applications increasingly splash across the headlines; however the law-makers using blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) systems to implement legal processes do not systematically consider the broader implications of their …