Agency Commons^™

Managing Risk On A $25 Million Bet: Venture Capital, Agency Costs, And The False Dichotomy Of The Corporation, Robert P. Bartlett Iii

ExpressO

An implicit dichotomy of the corporation exists in legal scholarship. On one side of the dichotomy rests the publicly-held corporation suffering from a significant conflict of interest between its managers and dispersed shareholders; on the other side, the closely-held corporation plagued by inter-shareholder conflict.

This Article argues that understanding the agency problems that can exist within a firm demands a rejection of this traditional dichotomy and the theories of the firm built upon it. Using venture capital finance, this Article demonstrates for the first time how this dichotomy obscures how all firms - public and private - often face the …

What Default Rules Teach Us About Corporations; What Understanding Corporations Teaches Us About Default Rules, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses corporate law's default rules, which allow corporations to waive their directors' liability for damages based on a breach of their fiduciary duty of care. Most large publicly held corporations have adopted such a waiver in their articles of association. This Article suggests that courts should limit the range of the waivers to the circumstances that existed when the voters voted and to the information they received before they voted. This Article distinguishes between public contracts (legislation) and private contracts (commercial transactions) and the default rules that apply to each. The Article shows that courts view corporations and …

The Dutch Auction Myth, Peter B. Oh

ExpressO

The initial public offering process is under assault. Critics of this process have woven a complex set of interconnected objections to the orthodox method for conducting IPOs, pricing of shares, and allocating them to preferred investors. These critics instead point to online auctions as an alternative IPO method that can provide more equitable access, efficient prices, and egalitarian allocations. These claims rest on Google’s recent IPO and W.R. Hambrecht + Co.’s OpenIPO mechanism, conventionally regarded as impure variants of what is known as a descending-bid or Dutch auction (Dutch IPO).

This article assesses the empirical and theoretical case for Dutch …

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

ExpressO

The Delaware General Corporation Law was amended in 1986 to permit shareholder-approved exculpatory charter provisions shielding directors from monetary liability for certain types of fiduciary duty breaches, explicitly excepting breaches of the duty of loyalty and conduct not in "good faith" – evidently distinct concepts in the Delaware legislature’s view. This paper 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 and doctrinal status of good faith. Specifically, the paper argues that Delaware's statutory exculpation regime and good faith case …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Organizational Misconduct: Beyond The Principal-Agent Model, Kimberly D. Krawiec

ExpressO

This article demonstrates that, at least since the adoption of the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines in 1991, the United States legal regime has been moving away from a system of strict vicarious liability toward a system of duty-based organizational liability. Under this system, organizational liability for agent misconduct is dependant on whether or not the organization has exercised due care to avoid the harm in question, rather than under traditional agency principles of respondeat superior. Courts and agencies typically evaluate the level of care exercised by the organization by inquiring whether the organization had in place internal compliance structures ostensibly designed …

Corporate Philanthropy, Executives' Pet Charities And The Agency Problem, Jayne W. Barnard

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Kossoy And Filco V. Bank Feuchtwanger Ltd, Aharon Barak, Shlomo Levin, Dov Levin

Translated Opinions

The appeal is centred on the question of the liability of shareholders of a bank who sold their shares knowing that the bank's funds would be used to finance the acquisition of the shares and that it would endanger the existence of the bank, and on the question of the liability of the directors of the bank, who allowed the aforesaid sale of the shares.

Held by the Supreme Court:

A. (1) The director is the "brain" and "nerve center" of the company's activities. He acts in its name towards outsiders and manages its affairs internally.

(2) For some purposes, …

The Controlling Persons Provisions: Conduits Of Secondary Liability Under Federal Securities Law, Kenneth I. Levin

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Book Review. Cases On Business Organization By R. Magill And R. P. Hamilton, Robert C. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Process--Service Under Corporations--Place Of Service

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Some Unscheduled Liabilities Of Trust Companies, Henry M. Bates

Articles

"The modern trust company, with its varied and highly developed functions, is a characteristic product of our present complex civilization... The trust company, as some one has said, has become the corporation's corporation, a sort of super-corporation.... The question then naturally arises, is there any law peculiar to trust companies?"