Business Organizations Law Commons^™

From Revolutionary To Palace Guard: The Role And Requirements Of Intermediaries Under Proposed Regulation Crowdfunding, Andrew D. Stephenson, Brian R. Knight, Matthew Bahleda

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Intermediaries in securities crowdfunding face significant requirements as a result of the statutory mandates of Title III of the JOBS Act. The SEC, in its proposed rules, provided structure to these requirements. The proposed rules would create strict requirements for intermediaries regarding their relationships with investors and how they undertake crowdfunding transactions under Section 4(a)(6) of the Securities Act. The proposed rules would also create and establish the guidelines for funding portals, a new type of limited purpose securities broker. While some commentators decry the SEC for placing undue burdens and legal liabilities on intermediaries in securities crowdfunding, the SEC …

Market Power In Power Markets: The Filed-Rate Doctrine And Competition In Electricity, Sandeep Vaheesan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

State and federal initiatives have opened the American electric power industry to competition over the past four decades. Although the process has not occurred uniformly across the country, wholesale electricity markets exist everywhere today. Independent power producers can construct generation facilities and sell their output to utilities and industrial customers through bilateral contracts. In many regions, centralized power markets now facilitate the sale of billions of dollars in electricity annually through auctions. Although market forces have replaced direct price regulation in electricity, antitrust enforcement has not expanded its role commensurately. A lack of competition has been a serious problem in …

Private Equity & Private Suits: Using 10b-5 Antifraud Suits To Discipline A Transforming Industry, Kenneth J. Black

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This note demonstrates why private equity will no longer be able to avoid private investor suits as it has (mostly) done in the past and explores the industry’s response to a growing number of investor suits. Notably, the industry has already begun to shift its strategy from regulatory avoidance to regulatory capture, at least in part to avoid investor suits. Given these changes, this note proposes that the best way to maintain discipline in the transforming private equity market is to protect the ability of investors to bring private suits.

Regulation Of Private Equity In Brazil: Policy Questions Presented And Critique, Shannon Guy

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

In this note, I explore some of the policy questions affecting Brazil’s private equity industry that the country must tackle. In Part II, Section A, I begin by asking the threshold question of whether the Brazilian government should play an active role in encouraging the growth of the private equity industry. I resolve that Brazil should play an active role in encouraging the industry’s growth to encourage several possible benefits to the real economy. Private equity may benefit the economy by providing job growth and job preservation, improved access to credit for firms that would not otherwise have funds, and …

Private Regulation Of Insider Trading In The Shadow Of Lax Public Enforcement: Evidence From Canadian Firms, Laura Nyantung Beny, Anita Anand

Articles

Like firms in the United States, many Canadian firms voluntarily restrict trading by corporate insiders beyond the requirements of insider trading laws (i.e., super-compliance). Thus, we aim to understand the determinants of firms’ private insider trading policies (ITPs), which are quasi-contractual devices. Based on the assumption that firms that face greater costs from insider trading (or greater benefits from restricting insider trading) ought to be more inclined than other firms to adopt more stringent ITPs, we develop several testable hypotheses. We test our hypotheses using data from a sample of firms included in the Toronto Stock Exchange/Standard and Poor’s (TSX/S&P) …

Persuasion Treaties, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

All treaties formalize promises made by national parties. Yet there is a fundamental difference between two kinds of treaty promise. This difference divides all treaties into two categories: treaties that govern the behavior of state parties and their agents fall in one category; treaties in the second category—those I call “persuasion” treaties—commit state parties to changing the behavior of non-state actors as well. The difference is important because the compliance problems for the two sets of treaties sharply diverge. Persuasion treaties merit our systematic attention because they are both theoretically and practically significant. In areas such as international environmental affairs, …

Regulatory Conflicts: International Tender And Exchange Offers In The 1990s, John C. Maguire

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federal Judicial And Legislative Jurisdiction Over Entities Abroad: The Long-Arm Of U.S. Antitrust Law And Viable Solutions Beyond The Timberlane/Restatement Comity Approach, Michael G. Mckinnon

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sales Between A Partnership And Non-Partners, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The code denies a deduction for a loss recognized on a sale or exchange between certain related parties. Two of the principal code sections that deny a deduction in that circumstance are sections 267(a)(1) and 707(b)(1)(A). Two regulatory provisions promulgated under section 267 apply the denial of a loss deduction rule to partnerships — reg. section 1.267(b)-1(b) and temp. reg. section 1.267(a)-2T(c), Question 2. I conclude that to the extent reg. section 1.267(b)-1(b) applies to section 267(a)(1), it is invalid and has been invalid since 1986. Also, two of the questions and answers in the temporary regulation are invalid.

Transnational Business Governance And The Management Of Natural Resources, Virginia Haufler

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

In the last two decades, the international community has intervened directly to reduce the conflict and corruption that accompany natural resource development in weakly governed states. These efforts converge on the norm of information disclosure by a number of different transnational business governance initiatives. This article examines how the successive failures of public and private efforts led to patterns of convergence and divergence in the transnational governance of the extractive sector. The timing of the effort, combined with variation in industry structure, differences in the targets of information disclosure, and learning over time influence the outcome in each case. This …

Private Equity In Brazil: Industry Overview And Regulatory Environment, Shannon Guy

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

The overall goal of this note is to paint a picture of the current state of the private equity industry in Brazil and the existing regulations which must be obeyed to participate as a private equity investor. Part II of this note provides a brief history of the private equity industry in Brazil, discusses recent investor interest in the growing area, and introduces the main regulatory bodies in Brazil. Part III explains several specific rules that govern a private equity investment by breaking down the “life” of a private equity investment into four stages: (1) setting up the private equity …

Facebook, The Jobs Act, And Abolishing Ipos, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Initial public offerings (IPOs)-the first sale of private firms' stock to the public-are a bellwether of investor sentiment. Investors must be bullish if they are putting their money into untested start-ups. IPOs are frequently cited in the business press as a key barometer of the health of financial markets. Politicians, too, see a steady flow of IPOs as an indicator that capital is fueling the entrepreneurial initiative that sustains the growth of new businesses. Growing businesses create jobs, so Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on the importance of promoting IPOs. That bipartisan consensus was on display this spring …

On The Role And Regulation Of Proxy Advisors, Paul Rose

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In anticipation of proxy season-the springtime ritual where companies prepare and deliver proxy statements in preparation for annual shareholder meetings-U.S. public companies typically reexamine their corporate governance structures and policies. Many corporate governance structures that were acceptable ten years ago are now considered outmoded or even evidence of managerial entrenchment. For example, consider the classified board of directors. In recent years, many companies have shifted from a classified board of directors to an annually elected board. A company might adopt an annually-elected board structure for a number of reasons. A classified board can serve as an entrenchment device, for instance, …

Simultaneous Distress Of Residential Developers And Their Secured Lenders An Analysis Of Bankruptcy & Bank Regulation , Sarah Pei Woo

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

The Tenth Annual A. A. Sommer, Jr. Lecture On Corporate, Securities, & Financial Law, Elisse B. Walter

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Jurisdictional competition in corporate law has long been a staple of academic-and sometimes, political-debate in the United States. State corporate law, by long-standing tradition in the United States, determines most questions of internal corporate governance-the role of boards of directors, the allocation of authority between directors, managers and shareholders, etc.-while federal law governs questions of disclosure to shareholders-annual reports, proxy statements, and periodic filings. Despite substantial incursions by Congress, most recently in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, this dividing line between state and federal law persists, so state law arguably has the most immediate impact on corporate governance outcomes.

London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

In the United States, state corporate law determines most questions of internal corporate governance - the role of directors; the allocation of authority between directors, managers, and shareholders; etc. - while federal law governs questions of disclosure to shareholders - annual reports, proxy statements, and periodic filings. Despite substantial incursions by Congress, most recently with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, this dividing line between state and federal law persists, so state law arguably has the most immediate effect on corporate governance outcomes.

Environmental Crime Comes Of Age: The Evolution Of Criminal Enforcement In The Environmental Regulatory Scheme, David M. Uhlmann

Articles

The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 often is considered the first environmental criminal statute because it contains strict liability provisions that make it a misdemeanor to discharge refuse into navigable waters of the United States without a permit. When Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Act, however, it was far more concerned with preventing interference with interstate commerce than environmental protection. For practical purposes, the environmental crimes program in the United States dates to the development of the modem environmental regulatory system during the 1970s, and amendments to the environmental laws during the 1980s, which upgraded criminal violations of …

Responding To The Subprime Mess: The New Regulatory Landscape, David Schmudde

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Securities Class Actions As Pragmatic Ex Post Regulation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

Securities class actions are on the chopping block-again. Traditional commentators continue to view class actions with suspicion; they see class suits as nonmeritorious byproducts of self-interest and the attorneys who bring them as rent-seekers. Their conventional approach has popularized securities class actions' negative effects. High-profile commissions capitalizing on this rhetoric, such as the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, have recently recommended eliminating or severely curtailing securities class actions. But this approach misses the point: in the ongoing push and pull of securities regulation, corporations are winning the battle.

Thus, understanding the full picture and texture of securities class actions necessitates …

Policies To Expand Minority Entrepreneurship: Closing Comments, Michael S. Barr

Book Chapters

This essay is based on comments delivered at the Conference on on Entrepreneurship in Low- and Moderate-Income Communities, November 3-4, 2005. This has been a productive conversation. In my closing comments, I want to shift our focus somewhat, from entrepreneurship in low-income communities to minority entrepreneurship generally. I want to do so because many minority entrepreneurs are connected to or hire from low-income communities, and because minority entrepreneurs face critical barriers even when they attempt to create and grow firms outside of distressed communities. In this comment, I want to highlight key barriers and suggest five steps for Congress, the …

Securities Regulation In Low-Tier Listing Venues: The Rise Of The Alternative Investment Market, Jose M. Mendoza

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Attorneys As Debt Relief Agencies: Constitutional Considerations, Marisa Terranova

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Hedge Funds, Liquidity And Prime Brokers, Nathan Bryce

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

The Antitrust Aspects Of Bank Mergers - Panel Discussion Ii: Consumer Issues, Carl Felsenfeld, Duncan Macdonald, Jeffrey Shinder, Robert Manning

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Federal Regulation And Legislation In The Wake Of The Subprime Mortgage Meltdown: A Legal Philosophical Analysis Of Federal Government Responses To Market Bubbles, Joshua Wirth

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Waging War With Wal-Mart: A Cry For Change Threatens The Future Of Industrial Loan Corporations, Zachariah J. Lloyd

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Cftc Regulation 1.59 Fails To Adequately Regulate Insider Trading, Gary Rubin

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Problems Of Securitizing Sub-Prime Loans, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

In October 2007, the board of directors of Merrill-Lynch, Smith & Fenner, one of the largest if not the largest brokerage houses in the United States, accepted the request for early retirement of its Chief Executive Officer. The brokerage firm disclosed that it has lost over $8 billion on its investments in sub-prime mortgage loans.¹ Merrill Lynch was not the only financial giant to sustain enormous losses. The losses caused market liquidity to dry up. The U.S. government took steps to ease the pressure.² But the high leverage of the system is still unravelling. The effect of these …

Still "Ain't No Glory In Pain": How The Telecommunications Act Of 1996 And Other 1990s Deregulation Facilitated The Market Crash Of 2002, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.