Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Business Organizations Law Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Commercial Law

Institution
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 511 - 540 of 875

Full-Text Articles in Business Organizations Law

The Challenge Of Fiduciary Regulation: The Investment Advisors Act After Seventy-Five Years, Roberta S. Karmel Jan 2016

The Challenge Of Fiduciary Regulation: The Investment Advisors Act After Seventy-Five Years, Roberta S. Karmel

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Seventy-five years after its enactment the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 has advanced from a relatively weak statute merely registering advisers with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to a more robust law imposing fiduciary responsibilities on advisers. Over the years, the number of investment advisers and the number of their clients have increased greatly. The SEC therefore has been pressured by Congress to develop a harmonized fiduciary standard for broker-dealers and advisers and also to develop and enforce a greater degree of oversight over the advisory industry. These developments have raised the questions of how to fund such efforts …


Open Sesame: The Myth Of Alibaba's Extreme Corporate Governance And Control, Yu-Hsin Lin, Thomas Mehaffy Jan 2016

Open Sesame: The Myth Of Alibaba's Extreme Corporate Governance And Control, Yu-Hsin Lin, Thomas Mehaffy

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

In September 2014, Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Alibaba) successfully launched a $25 billion initial public offering (IPO), the largest IPO ever, on New York Stock Exchange. Alibaba’s IPO success witnessed a wave among Chinese Internet companies to raise capital in U.S capital markets. A significant number of these companies have employed a novel, but poorly understood corporate ownership and control mechanism—the variable interest entity (VIE) structure and/or the disproportional control structure. The VIE structure was created in response to the Chinese restriction on foreign investments; however, it carries the risk of being declared illegal under Chinese law. The disproportional control …


Another Bite At The Apple For Trade Secret Protection: Why Stronger Federal Laws Are Needed To Protect A Corporation's Most Valuable Property, Alissa Cardillo Jan 2016

Another Bite At The Apple For Trade Secret Protection: Why Stronger Federal Laws Are Needed To Protect A Corporation's Most Valuable Property, Alissa Cardillo

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Trade secrets are one of a corporation’s most valuable assets. However, they lack adequate protection under federal law, leaving them vulnerable to theft and misappropriation. As technology advances, it becomes easier and less time consuming for individuals and entities to access and steal trade secrets to a corporation’s detriment. Most often these thefts involve stealing trade secrets in an intangible form. Current legislation fails to adequately protect intangible trade secrets, leaving them vulnerable to theft. An amendment to the National Stolen Property Act that encompasses intangible trade secrets would close a loophole that currently exists relating to intangible assets, allowing …


A Cautionary Look At A Cautionary Doctrine, Andrew W. Fine Jan 2016

A Cautionary Look At A Cautionary Doctrine, Andrew W. Fine

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Optimism is an indispensable element of effective salesmanship. It is therefore quite natural for the directors of public companies to want to optimistically tout the potential long-term benefits of investing in their companies. After all, directors of public companies must be empowered to attract the attention and money of American investors. But what happens if these long-term projections fail to come true? Who is to blame for long-term projections that are simply unrealistic? A doctrine called the “bespeaks caution” doctrine has emerged in order to govern these inquiries, and holds that these optimistic forward-looking statements are legally immunized provided that …


Share And Share Dislike: The Rise Of Uber And Airbnb And How New York City Should Play Nice, Alexandra Jonas Jan 2016

Share And Share Dislike: The Rise Of Uber And Airbnb And How New York City Should Play Nice, Alexandra Jonas

Journal of Law and Policy

Uber and Airbnb are two companies in the emerging “sharing economy” that provide individuals with a means to become entrepreneurs and benefit from a laissez-faire business model. The problem, however, is that while the benefits to users are great, so too are the risks. The dangers of operating without restraint and circumventing existing law are not only potentially harmful to unapprised users, but also adversely affect the continued use of these businesses. Every aggrieved user complaint has the potential for a lawsuit and every violation creates an opportunity for penalties. Left over are attempts by the courts and city government …


Contemplating The Gap-Filling Role Of Social Intrapreneurship, Tamara Belinfanti Jan 2016

Contemplating The Gap-Filling Role Of Social Intrapreneurship, Tamara Belinfanti

Articles & Chapters

Social intrapreneurs occupy an intersectional space within the large corporate form at the crossroads of innovation, profit, and social good. They are often described as "disruptive" because they devise new ways to tackle problems, usually social in nature, in a manner that disrupts traditional operating models or long-standing assumptions. Although much has been written about social intrapreneurs in managerial literature, legal literature has been silent. This Article reverses that trend and develops a theory of social intrapreneurship from a corporate law perspective. Specifically, this Article posits that social intrapreneurship in terms of praxis, characteristics, and process can be conceptualized as …


Officer Accountability, Megan Wischmeier Shaner Jan 2016

Officer Accountability, Megan Wischmeier Shaner

Faculty Articles

The officer is at the center of modern corporate governance. Wielding immense power and influence, officers’ conduct and decision-making can determine the success or failure of their companies and impact the economy more broadly. Fiduciary duties under state law serve as a vital check on officer power. This article is the third piece in a study of the role of fiduciary duties in regulating officer behavior. It examines an underlying premise in prior scholarship – that officers are rarely being held accountable for their conduct in the traditional fiduciary duty litigation context of state court. This article reviews opinions of …


The Global Reporting Initiative, Transnational Corporate Accountability, And Global Regulatory Counter-Currents., Cynthia A. Williams Jan 2016

The Global Reporting Initiative, Transnational Corporate Accountability, And Global Regulatory Counter-Currents., Cynthia A. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this essay, the Author provides an overview in Part I of some initiatives to require or encourage companies to produce specific ESG data, authored both by governments and by private standard-setters. In Part II, one disclosure initiative in particular will be discussed as an example of a transnational legal order (TLO), as defined by Professors Shaffer and Halliday,13 and that is the Global Reporting Initiative, which has become the benchmark corporate social disclosure framework. Part III identifies a number of significant questions about our knowledge of the real power of information strategies to change corporate behavior, as the GRI …


Reinterpreting The Status-Contract Divide: The Case Of Fiduciaries, Hanoch Dagan, Elizabeth S. Scott Jan 2016

Reinterpreting The Status-Contract Divide: The Case Of Fiduciaries, Hanoch Dagan, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The distinction between status and contract permeates legal analyses of categories of cooperative interpersonal interactions in which one party has particular obligations to the other. But the current binary understanding of the distinction has facilitated its use as a foil and thus undermined its conceptual and normative significance. This predicament is understandable given that the innate, comprehensive, and inalienable status as well as the wholly open-ended contract anticipated by commentators are corner — rather than core — alternatives in a liberal polity. Hence, to clarify these normative debates we introduce two further, intermediate conceptions: office and contract type. Like the …


The "New Insiders": Rethinking Independent Directors' Tenure, Yaron Nili Jan 2016

The "New Insiders": Rethinking Independent Directors' Tenure, Yaron Nili

Faculty Scholarship

Director independence is a cornerstone of modern corporate governance. Regulators, scholars, companies and shareholders have all placed a strong emphasis on director independence as a means to ensure that investors’ interests in their companies are well served. But what makes a director independent? While regulators and stock exchanges have tackled this elusive standard in different ways, the end goal is always the same – ensuring that the director is able to exercise truly independent judgment and further the best interests of shareholders. Surprisingly, these regulatory bodies have failed to consider the impact board tenure might have on director independence. This …


Private Equity And The Fcpa: Deal-Making As Reform Mechanism, Thomas J. Manning May 2015

Private Equity And The Fcpa: Deal-Making As Reform Mechanism, Thomas J. Manning

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


Directors’ Defence Of Reliance On Professional Advisers Under Anglo-Australian Law, Wai Yee Wan Mar 2015

Directors’ Defence Of Reliance On Professional Advisers Under Anglo-Australian Law, Wai Yee Wan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper analyses the issue of whether directors may use reliance on professional advice as a defence to a claim for breach of duty to exercise care, skill and diligence under common law or companies legislation in England and Australia. While England and Australia share the same common law tradition and have similar statutory provisions on the standard of care of directors, an English court generally regards a director as acting reasonably when he seeks advice from a qualified and independent professional adviser in a specialist matter within his expertise. In the absence of any conflict of interest, reliance is …


Trending@Rwu Law: Professor Carl Bogus's Post: When Corporations Grow Too Powerful: Reviving An Old Debate, Carl Bogus Feb 2015

Trending@Rwu Law: Professor Carl Bogus's Post: When Corporations Grow Too Powerful: Reviving An Old Debate, Carl Bogus

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.


The Joint Venture And Related Contract Laws Of Mainland China And Taiwan: A Comparative Analysis, Clyde D. Stoltenberg, David W. Mcclure Jan 2015

The Joint Venture And Related Contract Laws Of Mainland China And Taiwan: A Comparative Analysis, Clyde D. Stoltenberg, David W. Mcclure

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.


Balance And Team Production, Kelli A. Alces Jan 2015

Balance And Team Production, Kelli A. Alces

Seattle University Law Review

For decades, those holding the shareholder primacy view that the purpose of a corporation is to earn a profit for its shareholders have been debating with those who believe that corporations exist to serve broader societal interests. Adolph Berle and Merrick Dodd began the conversation over eighty years ago, and it continues today, with voices at various places along a spectrum of possible corporate purposes participating. Unfortunately, over time, the various sides of the debate have begun to talk past each other rather than engage with each other and have lost sight of whatever common ground they may be able …


The Boundaries Of "Team" Production Of Corporate Governance, Anthony J. Casey, M. Todd Henderson Jan 2015

The Boundaries Of "Team" Production Of Corporate Governance, Anthony J. Casey, M. Todd Henderson

Seattle University Law Review

We examine the cooperative production of corporate governance. We explain that this production does not occur exclusively within a “team” or “firm.” Rather, several aspects of corporate governance are quintessentially market products. Like Blair and Stout, we view the shareholder as but one of many stakeholders in a corporation. Where we depart from their analysis is in our view of the boundaries of a firm. We suggest that they overweight the intrafirm production of control. Focusing on the primacy of a board of directors, Blair and Stout posit a hierarchical team that governs the economic enterprise. We observe, however, that …


The Team Production Model As A Paradigm, Brian R. Cheffins Jan 2015

The Team Production Model As A Paradigm, Brian R. Cheffins

Seattle University Law Review

Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout suggested a few years after the publication of their 1999 Virginia Law Review article, A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, that their team production model was poised to emerge as part of a new corporate law “paradigm.” In so doing, they specifically invoked Thomas Kuhn’s well-known analysis of scientific revolutions. This Article revisits Blair and Stout’s team production theory by offering a critique of their claim that their model is destined to become a new corporate law paradigm in the Kuhnian sense. In so doing the Article draws upon key corporate law theories and …


Testing The Normative Desirability Of The Mediating Hierarch, Zachary J. Gubler Jan 2015

Testing The Normative Desirability Of The Mediating Hierarch, Zachary J. Gubler

Seattle University Law Review

In their influential article, A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, Professors Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout explained how corporate law might be viewed as an attempt at solving what is known as the team production problem. At its core, this problem has to do with the opportunistic behavior that arises when multiple economic actors make investments—whether of labor, capital, or otherwise—in a business venture where these investments are said to be “firm specific” because they cannot be easily withdrawn and redeployed in other projects. The problem is how to construct a governance regime that will create incentives for the …


Team Production & The Multinational Enterprise, Virginia Harper Ho Jan 2015

Team Production & The Multinational Enterprise, Virginia Harper Ho

Seattle University Law Review

Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout’s path-breaking article, A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, advances a dual thesis: first, that team production theory does a better job than its competitors (in particular, principal–agent theory) of explaining the advantages of the public corporation and key features of corporate law; and second, that, as a matter of corporate law, corporate boards are charged with advancing the collective interest of all the contributors to the corporate enterprise rather than the shareholders’ interests alone. Its central insight is that the role of the independent, or insulated, corporate board is to serve as a “mediating …


Hostile Takeovers And Overreliance, Anthony Niblett Jan 2015

Hostile Takeovers And Overreliance, Anthony Niblett

Seattle University Law Review

Commentators have argued that employees should be compensated in the event of a hostile takeover; otherwise, the threat of such a takeover will fail to incentivize firm-specific investments by employees. Such deferred compensation is analogous to the payment of damages following a breach of contract. The analogous breach, here, is the breach of an implicit contract between management and employees. Employees trusted management to compensate them for firm-specific investments not explicitly contracted for. This Article uses a familiar result from the contract law literature: There is no measure of damages for breach of contract that can generate both efficient breach …


Buying Teams, Andres Sawicki Jan 2015

Buying Teams, Andres Sawicki

Seattle University Law Review

The Sixth Annual Berle Symposium reflects on Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout’s classic article: A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law. Blair and Stout recast the modern law of public corporations through the lens of the team production theory of the firm. Here, I apply Blair and Stout’s insights—emphasizing the value of team production, independent monitors, and intellectual property rights—to a novel corporate transaction structure: the acqui-hire. In an acqui-hire, a publicly owned technology firm wants to add a start-up’s engineers. Instead of simply hiring them, though, it buys the start-up, discards most of its assets, and retains the start-up’s …


Team Production And Securities Laws, Urska Velikonja Jan 2015

Team Production And Securities Laws, Urska Velikonja

Seattle University Law Review

In the seminal paper that this symposium celebrates, A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout made two related points. First, that Delaware law does not require shareholder primacy in public corporations. Rather, the broad deference afforded to the decisions of predominantly independent corporate boards of directors is consistent with a contrary theory, that of team production, or, as they call it, “the mediating hierarch” theory. The fundamental role of the board of directors is to mediate between the interests of various stakeholders that contribute to the corporation’s output. As a result, Delaware courts have repeatedly …


With The Emergence Of Public Benefit Corporations, Directors Of Traditional For-Profit Companies Should Tread Cautiously, But Welcome The Opportunity To Invest In Social Enterprise, Mckenzie Holden Granum Jan 2015

With The Emergence Of Public Benefit Corporations, Directors Of Traditional For-Profit Companies Should Tread Cautiously, But Welcome The Opportunity To Invest In Social Enterprise, Mckenzie Holden Granum

Seattle University Law Review

Social entrepreneurship has become the popular term used to describe business forms that aim to produce profits while also seeking to significantly advance one or more social or environmental goals. In response to an increase in social entrepreneurship across sectors—from progressive industries like organic farming to conservative industries such as insurance and banking—several states have adopted new corporate governance structures. Such legislation allows incorporating businesses to choose an off-the-shelf formation type that embeds a social mission into its legal structure. The bulk of the newly implemented statutory forms provide not only a new framework for social entrepreneurs to work within, …


Boards Of Directors As Mediating Hierarchs, Margaret M. Blair Jan 2015

Boards Of Directors As Mediating Hierarchs, Margaret M. Blair

Seattle University Law Review

In June of 2014, the board of directors of Demoulas Supermarkets, Inc.—better known as Market Basket, a mid-sized chain of grocery stores in New England—decided to oust the man who had been CEO for the previous six years, Arthur T. Demoulas. Most likely, the board of directors did not anticipate what happened next: Thousands of employees, customers, and fans of Market Basket boycotted the stores and staged noisy public protests asking the board to reinstate “Arthur T.” The reaction by employees and customers made what had been a simmering, nasty, intrafamily feud within the closely held Market Basket chain into …


The Long Road To Reformulating The Understanding Of Directors' Duties: Legalizing Team Production Theory?, Thomas Clarke Jan 2015

The Long Road To Reformulating The Understanding Of Directors' Duties: Legalizing Team Production Theory?, Thomas Clarke

Seattle University Law Review

In this Article, the historical evolution of corporate governance is considered, highlighting the different eras of governance, the dominant theoretical and practical paradigms, and the reformulation of paradigms and counter paradigms. Two alternative and sharply contrasting theorizations, one collective and collaborative (the work of Berle and Means), the other individualistic and contractual (agency theory and shareholder value) are focused upon. The explanatory potential of Blair and Stout’s team production theory is elaborated, along with its conception of the complexity of business enterprise, with a mediating hierarch (the board of directors) securing a balance between the interests of different stakeholders. The …


The Agency Cost Paradigm: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Claire A. Hill, Brett H. Mcdonnell Jan 2015

The Agency Cost Paradigm: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Claire A. Hill, Brett H. Mcdonnell

Seattle University Law Review

In the “managerialist” world that preceded our present shareholder value world, some corporate managers could, and did, help themselves when they should have been doing their jobs. The modern agency cost paradigm has focused attention on this problem, in part by conceptualizing the duty of corporate managers as maximizing shareholder value. This paradigm has had a variety of effects: some good, some bad, and some ugly. The agency cost paradigm has had a good effect by focusing on the problem of managerial enrichment and providing a simple, clear benchmark—shareholder value-- that may quickly indicate when managers are performing badly. However, …


A Theory Of The Just Corporation, Ronit Donyets-Kedar Jan 2015

A Theory Of The Just Corporation, Ronit Donyets-Kedar

Seattle University Law Review

In their seminal article A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout hold that the modern corporation is best understood in terms of team production. Challenging the principal–agent model, Blair and Stout offer an analysis that considers the various stakeholders of the corporation as members of a team. Accordingly, they suggest, the purpose of corporate law is to provide a response to the problems created by collective production processes, in particular those pertaining to the distribution of profits stemming from the cooperation. According to Blair and Stout, the solution to this problem is to be found …


Team Production Theory And Private Company Boards, Elizabeth Pollman Jan 2015

Team Production Theory And Private Company Boards, Elizabeth Pollman

Seattle University Law Review

In their path-breaking article, A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout provided a new theory of the board of directors in a corporation. Drawing on the economic theory of team production, Blair and Stout argued that the board of directors serves as a mediating hierarchy for the firm as a whole, encouraging firm-specific investments from team members and reducing shirking and opportunistic behavior. While Blair and Stout provided a dramatically different view of the corporation from the conventional principal-agent account, they also delineated limitations to their proposed theory. Most importantly, they suggested that the …


The Corporation As Time Machine: Intergenerational Equity, Intergenerational Efficiency, And The Corporate Form, Lynn A. Stout Jan 2015

The Corporation As Time Machine: Intergenerational Equity, Intergenerational Efficiency, And The Corporate Form, Lynn A. Stout

Seattle University Law Review

This Symposium Article argues that the board-controlled corporation can be understood as a legal innovation that historically has functioned as a means of transferring wealth forward and sometimes backward through time, for the benefit of present and future generations. In this fashion the board-controlled corporation promotes both intergenerational equity and intergenerational efficiency. Logic and evidence each suggest, however, that the modern embrace of “shareholder value” as the only corporate objective and “shareholder democracy” as the ideal of corporate governance is damaging the corporate form’s ability to serve this economically and ethically important function.


Litigating Consumer Protection Acts In The Hamp Context, Amanda Martin Jan 2015

Litigating Consumer Protection Acts In The Hamp Context, Amanda Martin

Seattle University Law Review

The foreclosure crisis has lingered despite the improving economy. To alleviate this crisis, the U.S. government implemented the Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP), a Treasury-sponsored initiative that aims to prevent foreclosure by encouraging mortgage loan servicers to modify the mortgages of qualified homeowners. The Treasury Department has extended HAMP multiple times—from its original ending date in 2013 to its present ending date in 2016. While HAMP has indeed helped homeowners avoid foreclosure, the program has spawned an array of litigation as servicer misconduct runs rampant. As the Ninth Circuit recently noted, “the [HAMP] program seems to have created more litigation …