Law Commons^™

Being Informed Does Matter: Fine Tuning Gross Negligence Twenty Plus Years After Van Gorkom, Bernard S. Sharfman

Bernard S Sharfman

This article first establishes that there are still a number of reasons why being informed does matter, despite the ability to incorporate an exculpation clause into a Delaware corporation’s certificate of incorporation. This is followed by an explanation of how Delaware’s business judgment rule became transformed from a doctrine of abstention to a standard of review in the context of procedural due care. Throughout this article, it is understood that the business judgment rule exits within a framework of corporate authority and accountability and that it serves as a significant tool for the protection of corporate board authority. The article …

The New Global Financial Landscape: Why Egregious International Corporate Fraud Should Be Cognizable Under The Alien Tort Claims Act, Joel Slawotsky

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

No abstract provided.

Too Many Bells? Too Many Whistles? Corporate Governance In The Post-Enron, Post-Worldcom Era, Douglas M. Branson

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Group Dynamics Theory Of Executive Compensation, Michael B. Dorff

ExpressO

The corporate governance debate has focused recently on executive compensation. While defenders of the status quo assert that CEO compensation – and corporate governance generally -- is efficient, critics contend that boards have been captured by powerful CEOs who demand excessive pay unconditioned on their performance. Both sides argue that the evidence garnered from CEO compensation justifies their positions on legal reform of corporate governance as a whole. Defenders of the status quo argue that the system works well as is, as demonstrated by the enormous success of U.S. corporations. Critics concerned about managerial power propose reforms that will increase …

Sex, Trust, And Corporate Boards, Joan M. Heminway

ExpressO

This essay collects and interprets social science research on sex and trust and uses this work to shed new light on the emerging case for gender diversity on corporate boards. Specifically, the essay describes research findings that indicate (1) that men and women trust and are trustworthy on different bases and (2) the existence of a bias against women in corporate leadership positions. Based on this research and current legal scholarship on corporate governance, the essay asserts that gender diversity on corporate boards may be desirable but difficult to attain. The essay also calls for more targeted research on the …

The Case Against Mandatory Annual Director Elections And Shareholders' Meetings, William K. Sjostrom

ExpressO

The article examines the mandatory requirement under state corporate law and stock exchange listing standards that public corporations hold annual shareholders’ meetings for the election of directors. Specifically, I question the value of requiring corporations to (1) elect directors annually, and (2) hold shareholders’ meetings annually. I critique the various justifications for these requirements and find none of them persuasive. I then explore a different approach taken by Minnesota with respect to the frequency of director elections and shareholders’ meetings and conclude that the approach is superior to the current scheme. Recognizing, however, that any less strict state approach is …

Why We Need Global Standards For Corporate Disclosure, Allen L. White

Law and Contemporary Problems

After two years of gradual revelations concerning undisclosed information on suicidal risks to children on antidepressants, a federal advisory committee in Sep 2004 recommended that such drugs be labeled to alert physicians and consumers of this risk. The antidepressant story is noteworthy in its own right, shedding light on the tangled web of legal, regulatory, economic, and ethical issues surrounding disclosure practices in the pharmaceutical industry. The complex interworkings of an emerging global economy make it necessary for corporate standards for disclosure to be established and enforced.

Business Strategists And Election Commissioners: How The Meaning Of Loyalty Varies With The Board’S Distinct Fiduciary Roles, Ethan G. Stone

Ethan G. Stone

For twenty years, Delaware courts have been developing special standards to review board decisions that interfere with hostile bids for control or the exercise of the shareholder franchise. These “Unocal” and “Blasius” doctrines seem to fit uneasily with theories of the board’s role in corporate governance, constraining board discretion too little for shareholder primacy theories and too much for board autonomy theories. Nor have the Delaware courts succeeded in fitting Unocal and Blasius comfortably with their treatment of board decisions in other contexts. In this article, I propose that these special doctrines reflect the difference between two separate functions of …

Brand New Deal: The Branding Effect Of Corporate Deal Structures, Victor Fleischer

Michigan Law Review

Consider the unusual legal structures of the following four deals: When Google went public in 2004, it used an Internet auction to sell its stock to shareholders. When Ben & Jerry's went public in 1984, it sold its stock only to Vermont residents. Steve Jobs's contract with Apple entitles him to an annual cash salary of exactly one dollar. Stanley Works, a Connecticut toolmaker, considered reincorporating in Bermuda to reduce its tax liability. Under public pressure, it changed its mind and remains legally incorporated in Connecticut. What do these deals have in common? In each case, the legal infrastructure of …

The Chameleon Effect: Beyond The Bonding Hypothesis For Cross-Listed Securities, Cally Jordan

ExpressO

This paper is based on a presentation made at the New York Stock Exchange Conference on the Future of Global Equity Trading, March 12, 2004, Sarasota, FL.

Looking back, was it a momentary enthusiasm? The dramatic increase in cross-listed securities, particularly in the United States, was one of the remarkable phenomena of the 1990s capital markets. The bonding, or corporate governance, hypothesis was one of the more intriguing theories to surface to explain the phenomenon. Cross-listing, the hypothesis suggested, might be a bonding mechanism by which firms, incorporated in a jurisdiction with “weak protection” of minority shareholder rights or poor …

Convergence Of Corporate Governance And Islamic Financial Services Industry: Toward Islamic Financial Services Securities Market, Ali A. Ibrahim

Georgetown Law Graduate Paper Series

This paper briefly discusses the significance of corporate governance for the Islamic financial services industry. Furthermore, it predicts that the Islamic financial services industry is likely to converge to modern governance practices. The paper also argues that the industry needs to have a homogenous and specialized regional securities market to realize its true potential.

Sarbanes-Oxley's Structural Model To Encourage Corporate Whistleblowers, Richard E. Moberly

ExpressO

Recent corporate scandals demonstrate that rank-and-file employees often remain silent in the face of significant fraud. This silence is unfortunate because corporate employees have inside knowledge of misconduct that gives them an information advantage over more traditional corporate monitors, such as independent directors and government regulators. To address this problem, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act utilized a new approach that encourages employee whistleblowers to disclose information about corporate wrongdoing. This approach, which Professor Richard Moberly labels the “Structural Model,” requires that corporations provide a standardized channel for employees to report organizational misconduct to official monitors within the corporation. This Article offers an …

Comparative Corporate Governance: Irish, American, And European Responses To Corporate Scandals, Manish Gupta

ExpressO

A comparative review of legislative reactions to corporate scandals such as Enron and WorldCom. This paper examines American, Irish, and European Union legislation meant to deal with regulating corporations.

Compensating Power: An Analysis Of Rents And Rewards In The Mutual Fund Industry, William A. Birdthistle

All Faculty Scholarship

The allegations of malfeasance in the investment management industry - market timing, late trading, revenue sharing, and several others - involve a broad range of mutual fund operations. This Article seeks to explain the common source of these irregularities by focusing upon a trait they share: the practice of investment advisers' capitalizing upon their managerial influence to increase assets under management in order to generate greater fees from those assets. This Article extends theories of executive compensation into the context of investment management to understand the extraction of rents by mutual fund advisers. Investment advisers, as collective groups of portfolio …

The Political Dynamics Of Corporate Legislation: Lessons From Israel, Yael T. Ben-Zion

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Does The Law Encourage Unethical Conduct In The Securities Industry?, Di Lorenzo Vincent

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

The Next Generation: Milhaupt And West On Japanese Economic Law, Kent Anderson

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of Economic Organizations and Corporate Governance in Japan: The Impact of Formal and Informal Rules by Curtis Milhaupt & Mark West

Understanding Maryland's Business Judgment Rule, Bernard S. Sharfman

Bernard S Sharfman

No abstract provided.

Natural Law And Agency Theory, Michael Lp Lower

Michael LP Lower

Corporate governance scholarship is awash with theories of the firm: these are "stories" or metaphors that try to shed light on the nature and purpose of the firm as an institution and on one or more of the following questions:

(i) how the institution of the firm "evolved" (or its economic or social purpose); (ii) whether "the firm" is a reality or a rhetorical device; and (iii) the relationship between "the firm" and stakeholders, political society and so on.

Theories of the firm are used both to explain and to help develop law and policy. If the theory is misconceived, …

Faith And Faithfulness In Corporate Theory, Lyman P.Q. Johnson

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Parallel Worlds Of Corporate Governance And Labor Law, Peer Zumbansen

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper engages the concept of transnational law (TL) in a way that goes beyond the by now accustomed usages with regard to the development of legal norms and the observation of legal action across nation-state boundaries, involving both state and nonstate actors. The concept of TL can serve to illustrate much further-reaching set of developments in norm creation and legal regulation. TL is here understood not only as a body of legal norms, but it is also employed as a methodological approach to illustrate common and shared challenges and responses to legal regulatory systems worldwide. In the case of …

Specific Investment: Explaining Anomalies In "Corporate Law", Margaret M. Blair, Lynn A. Stout

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article has two goals: to praise Professor Robert Clark as a remarkable corporate scholar, and to explore how his work has helped to advance our understanding of corporations and corporate law. Clark wrote his classic treatise at a time when corporate scholarship was dominated by a principal-agent paradigm that viewed shareholders as the principals or sole residual claimants in public corporations and treated directors as shareholders' agents. This view naturally led contemporary scholars to believe that the chief economic problem of interest in corporate law was the "agency cost" problem of getting corporate directors to do what shareholders wanted …

Mutual Funds And Proxy Voting: New Evidence On Corporate Governance, Burton Rothberg, Steven Lilien

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Should Shares Issued Directly From A Corporation Constitute A Control Share Acquisition? , Andrew J. Opiola

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Controlling Shareholders And Corporate Governance: Complicating The Comparative Taxonomy, Ronald J. Gilson

Faculty Scholarship

Corporate governance scholarship has shifted focus in recent years from hostile takeovers, which occur primarily in the widely held shareholder systems of the United States and the United Kingdom, to the comparative merits of the "controlling shareholder" systems that are the norm most everywhere else in the world. In this emerging debate, the simple dichotomy between controlling shareholder systems and widely held shareholder systems that has largely dominated the discourse is too coarse to allow a deeper understanding of the diversity of ownership structures in different national capital markets and their policy implications. In this Article, Professor Ronald Gilson seeks …

The Fundamental Rights Of The Shareholder, Julian Velasco

Journal Articles

Shareholders have many legal rights, but they are not all of equal significance. This article will argue that two rights — the right to elect directors and the right to sell shares — are more important than any others, that these rights should be considered the fundamental rights of the shareholder, and that, as such, they deserve a great deal of respect and protection by law.

The history of corporate law has been one of increasing flexibility for directors and decreasing rights for shareholders. Although the law seems to have coalesced around the norm of shareholder primacy, this is not …

A Tale Of Two Trajectories, Cynthia A. Williams

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Independent Director In Chinese Corporate Governance, Donald C. Clarke

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Corporate governance (gongsi zhili) is a concept whose time has come in China, and the institution of the independent director is a major part of this concept. Policymakers in several countries such as the United Kingdom and Japan have turned to independent directors as an important element of legal and policy reform in the field of corporate governance. In August 2001, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued its Guidance Opinion on the Establishment of an Independent Director System in Listed Companies. Covering all companies listed on Chinese stock exchanges (but not Chinese companies listed overseas), it constitutes the most …

Clogs In The Pipeline: The Mixed Data On Women Directors And Continued Barriers To Their Advancement, Lisa M. Fairfax

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The longstanding disparity between the percentage of women in the workforce and their membership on corporate boards indicates that women continue to face significant barriers to corporate board membership. Evidence drawn from an empirical study on women directors at Fortune 100 companies demonstrates that the mere passage of time does not eliminate these barriers. This empirical study confirms that women have made considerable progress since 1934, but the aggregate number of women directors is small when compared against their percentages in the workforce and school population.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 may have resulted in changes in board composition that …

Good Faith, State Of Mind, And The Outer Boundaries Of Director Liability In Corporate Law, Christopher M. Bruner

Scholarly Works

The Delaware General Corporation Law was amended in 1986 to permit shareholder-approved exculpatory charter provisions shielding corporate directors from monetary liability for certain fiduciary duty breaches not including (among other things) breaches of the duty of loyalty and acts not in good faith. This article examines the development of corporate fiduciary duty doctrine in Delaware leading up to and following this statutory amendment, focusing particularly on the Delaware courts' evolving conception of the meaning anddoctrinal status of the good faith concept employed in recent cases to permit a non-exculpable cause ofaction for conscious nonfeasance.

The article argues that Delaware's good …