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Articles 241 - 270 of 270
Full-Text Articles in Securities Law
Shareholders And Social Welfare, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Shareholders And Social Welfare, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Seattle University Law Review
This Article addresses the questions of whether and how shareholders matter for social welfare, finding that different and contrasting answers have prevailed during different periods of recent history. Observers in the mid-twentieth century believed that the socioeconomic characteristics of real-world shareholders were highly pertinent to social welfare inquiries. But those observers went on to conclude that there followed no justification for catering to shareholder interest, for shareholders occupied elite social strata. The answer changed during the twentieth century’s closing decades, when observers came to accord the shareholder interest a key structural role in the enhancement of economic efficiency even as …
Central Bank-Led Capitalism?, Andrew Bowman Et Al.
Central Bank-Led Capitalism?, Andrew Bowman Et Al.
Seattle University Law Review
Since the first acute episode of financial crisis in autumn 2008, the world has manifestly changed in dramatic ways that reinforce skepticism and challenge the old assumptions of political economy. Hence this Article about central banks, whose pivotal role in post-crisis capitalism has not been adequately politically or theoretically addressed in any existing literature and can now be opened up by a conjunctural analysis that recognises uncertainty and mutability. There are several reasons why this is an intellectually and politically interesting task. Central banks have become an object of controversy and public attention after being pivotally involved in crisis management, …
Making Money: Leverage And Private Sector Money Creation, Margaret M. Blair
Making Money: Leverage And Private Sector Money Creation, Margaret M. Blair
Seattle University Law Review
Contrary to the beliefs of most macroeconomists, the financial sector in the United States has grown too large in the last few decades as a consequence of financial innovation that has encouraged the use of too much “leverage” (financing with debt) by financial institutions (as well as by consumers and other borrowers). In Part II, I connect the dots between excessive leverage, risk, and financial market volatility. In Part III, I explore the role that the “shadow-banking sector” has had in driving leverage. In Part IV, I explain why leverage at the level of financial institutions matters for the macroeconomy. …
The Governance And Disclosure Of The Firm As An Enterprise Entity, Yuri Biondi
The Governance And Disclosure Of The Firm As An Enterprise Entity, Yuri Biondi
Seattle University Law Review
During recent decades, the rapid pace of financial markets involving new modes of management, governance, and regulation has framed business firms. This corporate drift toward financialization is summarized under the “shareholder value” label. What do financial markets do? Unequivocally, they organize trading on shares that are securities: tradable financial entitlements established by law, which formalize expectations, and claims of financial rents paid by the issuing company. Actually, how continued quotation on share exchanges came to be the barometer of economic or social welfare is a different matter. The latter adoption has required quite a great leap from “the euthanasia of …
Rationales And Designs To Implement An Institutional Big Bang In The Governance Of Global Finance, Emilios Avgouleas
Rationales And Designs To Implement An Institutional Big Bang In The Governance Of Global Finance, Emilios Avgouleas
Seattle University Law Review
The colossal challenges facing international finance pertain to both its governance system and its dual utility and speculative functions, which have become ever more intertwined with the advent of financial innovation. In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), a number of significant reforms are under way to address the second issue, including additional capital and liquidity requirements for banks, measures to battle interconnectedness in the financial sector, new resolution regimes that would allow banks to fail more easily, and stricter frameworks for bank supervision and monitoring of systemic risk. Yet limited progress has been made with respect to …
Framing Address: A Framework For Analyzing Financial Market Transformation, Steven L. Schwarcz
Framing Address: A Framework For Analyzing Financial Market Transformation, Steven L. Schwarcz
Seattle University Law Review
The title of this Symposium originally was “Rethinking Financial and Securities Markets.” It is, of course, somewhat presumptuous for scholars to try to rethink financial markets per se. Markets, including financial markets, are driven primarily by supply and demand. But scholars can and should try to influence the future of financial markets by rethinking their fundamental aspects. This Symposium presents work from leading scholars in the fields of law, economics, finance, and accounting. I will try to frame the discussion from the perspectives of these four disciplines. First, however, we need to identify what it is about financial markets that …
The Challenges For Directors In Piloting Through State And Federal Standards In The Maelstrom Of Risk Management, Chief Justice E. Norman Veasey
The Challenges For Directors In Piloting Through State And Federal Standards In The Maelstrom Of Risk Management, Chief Justice E. Norman Veasey
Seattle University Law Review
In the 2010 Berle Center Directors’ Academy Keynote Address, Chief Justice Veasey addresses “the federal and state contexts relating to the corporate-governance focus on business risk and the expectations laid at the doorstep of directors and officers of U.S. public companies.” Specifically, Chief Justice Veasey looks “at the governance landscape through both a federal regulatory lens and a state judicial lens as it relates to risk assessment and risk management.”
Leveraged Etfs: The Trojan Horse Has Passed The Margin-Rule Gates, William M. Humphries
Leveraged Etfs: The Trojan Horse Has Passed The Margin-Rule Gates, William M. Humphries
Seattle University Law Review
What do the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the demise of Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns all have in common? One word: leverage. The misuse of leverage, in all its forms, contributed greatly to all of these events. Yet even today, common investors can purchase a leveraged exchange-traded fund (leveraged ETF), a complex product that uses leverage to increase returns, without triggering applicable laws designed to regulate the use of leverage. This Comment articulates the basics surrounding the functions and operations of leveraged ETFs and margin rules in order to assess the compatibility of the two. The Comment argues …
Enumerating Old Themes? Berle’S Concept Of Ownership And The Historical Development Of English Company Law In Context, Lorraine E. Talbot
Enumerating Old Themes? Berle’S Concept Of Ownership And The Historical Development Of English Company Law In Context, Lorraine E. Talbot
Seattle University Law Review
This paper offers some tentative suggestions as to why Berle’s work has been read and interpreted so selectively in the United Kingdom. I suggest that this must be partly attributable to the historical developments in English company law that entrenched the notion of shareholder ownership claims. Specifically, unincorporated associations’ normative values—that members are owners and there is no distinction between small organizations with no share dispersal and large organizations with wide share dispersal—have a continuing influence on this entrenched notion of shareholder ownership claims. First, I provide an overview of the origins of English company law. Next, I address how …
See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations, Erika George
Seattle University Law Review
Much corporate legal scholarship considers such fact patterns as beyond the scope of the discipline’s core concerns. Yet, increasingly, questions are asked concerning the scale and scope of modern corporate power. This Article will challenge the conventional understanding of what the core discipline of corporate law should encompass and argues that the failure to focus on precisely these sorts of factual scenarios involving allegations of corporate complicity in human rights violations and environmental degradation is misguided and short-sighted.
Neo-Brandeisianism And The New Deal: Adolf A. Berle, Jr., William O. Douglas, And The Problem Of Corporate Finance In The 1930s, Jessica Wang
Seattle University Law Review
This essay revisits Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and The Modern Corporation and Private Property by focusing on the triangle of Berle, Louis D. Brandeis, and William O. Douglas in order to examine some of the underlying assumptions about law, economics, and the nature of modern society behind securities regulation and corporate finance in the 1930s. I explore Douglas and Berle’s academic and political relationship, the conceptual underpinnings of Brandeis, Berle, and Douglas’s critiques of modern finance, and the ways in which the two younger men—Berle and Douglas—ultimately departed from their role model, Brandeis.
Monitoring To Reduce Agency Costs: Examining The Behavior Of Independent And Non-Independent Boards, Anita Anand, Frank Milne, Lynnette Purda
Monitoring To Reduce Agency Costs: Examining The Behavior Of Independent And Non-Independent Boards, Anita Anand, Frank Milne, Lynnette Purda
Seattle University Law Review
Berle and Means’s analysis of the corporation—in particular, their view that those in control are not the owners of the corporation—raises questions about actions that corporations take to counter concerns regarding management’s influence. What mechanisms, if any, do corporations implement to balance the distribution of power in the corporation? To address this question, we analyze boards of directors’ propensity to voluntarily adopt recommended corporate governance practices. Because board independence is one way to enhance shareholders’ ability to monitor management, we probe whether firms with independent boards of directors (which we define as boards with either an independent chair or a …
Rethinking The Separation Of Ownership From Management In American History, Kenneth Lipartito, Yumiko Morii
Rethinking The Separation Of Ownership From Management In American History, Kenneth Lipartito, Yumiko Morii
Seattle University Law Review
In <em>The Modern Corporation and Private Property</em>, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means would use AT&T as a prime example of what they saw as a dangerous new trend, the replacement of ownership-based capitalism with giant corporations controlled by a small group of propertyless managers. Indeed, AT&T became Berle and Means’ favorite example. . . . As we shall see, however, the claim that AT&T was a leading example of the separation of ownership from management is incomplete. More importantly, the common interpretation of Berle and Means’ work is mistaken, placing the emphasis incorrectly on the number of shareholders and reading …
Securities Intermediaries And The Separation Of Ownership From Control, Jill E. Fisch
Securities Intermediaries And The Separation Of Ownership From Control, Jill E. Fisch
Seattle University Law Review
The Modern Corporation & Private Property is a paradigm-shifting analysis of the modern corporation. The book is perhaps best known for the insights of Berle and Means about the separation of ownership from control and the consequences of that separation for the allocation of power within the corporation. The Berle and Means story focuses on the shareholder as the owner of the corporation. Berle and Means saw the mechanism of centralized management—in which the shareholder retains the economic interest but not the control rights associated with ownership—as threatening the conception of shareholder interests in terms of property rights. In particular, …
The Modern Corporation As Social Construction, Mark S. Mizruchi, Daniel Hirschman
The Modern Corporation As Social Construction, Mark S. Mizruchi, Daniel Hirschman
Seattle University Law Review
Classic works, Mark Mizruchi and Lisa Fein argued, share a particular fate. Authors often cite classic works without reading them—or without reading them carefully. . . . Yet perhaps no single work fits the above description better than one of the most important books on the large corporation ever published: Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’s The Modern Corporation and Private Property. One can speculate that few works in the social sciences have been as often cited and as little read. As a consequence, we would expect The Modern Corporation to be a good candidate for either selective interpretation or …
Corporate Power In The Public Eye: Reassessing The Implications Of Berle’S Public Consensus Theory, Marc T. Moore, Antoine Rebérioux
Corporate Power In The Public Eye: Reassessing The Implications Of Berle’S Public Consensus Theory, Marc T. Moore, Antoine Rebérioux
Seattle University Law Review
We analyze Berle’s overall corporate governance project in accordance with what we see as its four core sub-themes: (A) the limitations of external market forces as a constraint on managerial decision-making power; (B) the desirability of internal (corporate) over external (market) actors in allocating corporate capital; (C) civil society and the public consensus as a continuous informal check on managerial decision-making power; and (D) shareholder democracy (as opposed to shareholder primacy or shareholder wealth maximization) as a socially instrumental institution. We seek to debunk the popular misconception that Berle’s early work was a defense of the orthodox shareholder primacy paradigm …
Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Seattle University Law Review
On the weekend of November 6–8, 2009, scholars from around the world gathered in Seattle for a symposium—In Berle’s Footsteps—celebrating the launch of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. As founding director of the Berle Center, I described our undertaking: “It is with a profound sense of obligation to the legacy that has been entrusted to my care, that I announce the launching of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. It is a privilege to follow in Berle’s footsteps.”
Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii
Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii
Seattle University Law Review
Law is, in many ways, a backwards-looking field. We litigate over facts that have already occurred, challenge deals that have already been signed, and apply rules of decision based on previously-established precedent or statutes already enacted. To the extent that this Center and the symposium reflect on Berle’s work, they too are an exercise in looking back. Indeed, some might say the establishment of a Center named in Berle’s honor is a monument to the past.
Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces
Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces
Seattle University Law Review
Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means painted what remains a defining portrait of corporate law. The separation of ownership and control they described and the agency costs it causes are still a central concern of the law of corporate governance. For that reason, Berle’s work is relevant nearly eighty years after its publication. Seemingly forgotten, however, is that Berle’s enduring description of the corporate structure was published before most of today’s corporate law was in place. His work preceded the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and even preceded the dominance of Delaware common law in …
Tracking Berle’S Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation’S Last Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Tracking Berle’S Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation’S Last Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Seattle University Law Review
Readers game enough to work through all three hundred pages of The Modern Corporation and Private Property looking for insights on corporate law today encounter two, apparently contradictory, lines of thought. One line, set out in Books II and III, resonates comfortably with today’s shareholder-centered corporate legal theory. Here the book teaches that even as ownership and control have separated, managers should function as trustees for the shareholders and so should exercise their wide-ranging powers for the shareholders’ benefit. The other line of thought emerges in Books I and IV, where The Modern Corporation encases this shareholder trust model in …
Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution, Cristie Ford, Carol Liao
Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution, Cristie Ford, Carol Liao
Seattle University Law Review
We are in a time when the notion of property is in flux. The derivatives revolution has shattered the “atom of property” well beyond what was originally imagined in 1932 by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means. This disaggregation has had fascinating, and often adverse, effects on corporate law and securities regulation. Moreover, the phenomenon has had the unexpected effect of permitting some parties that already possess considerable social, economic, and political power to accumulate even more.
The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel
The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel
Seattle University Law Review
In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner Means wrote about the separation of ownership from control in corporations. They noted that the interests of the controlling directors and managers can diverge from those of the shareholder owners of the firm. . . . There are those who consider such a decoupling beneficial. Others express the same concern that Berle and Means have expressed. And depending on what one focuses on in viewing the pluses and minuses of these separations, one could reach different conclusions. I reach a number of conclusions. First, the separation of …
Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill
Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill
Seattle University Law Review
Shareholders, and the relationship between shareholders and management, lay at the heart of Professor Berle’s scholarship. The goal of this Article is to compare the image of shareholders emerging from The Modern Corporation and Private Property and the Berle/Dodd debate with a range of contemporary visions of the shareholder that underpin some international regulatory responses to recent financial debacles, from Enron to the current global financial crisis. As the Article dis- cusses, these recent developments in the era of financial crises have prompted a reevaluation of the traditional image of the shareholder—and the role of the shareholder in the modern …
Berle And The Entrepreneur, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Berle And The Entrepreneur, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Seattle University Law Review
In the first and last four chapters (“the Five Chapters”) of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf Berle, Jr. describes in sweeping terms a fundamental transformation of the American economy. . . . Writing more than ten years before Berle, another seminal scholar, Frank Knight . . . developed a theory of the entrepreneur as part of his larger effort to more carefully explain the theoretical underpinnings of a free-market economy. . . . Given Knight’s prominence and the fact that Knight apparently reached dramatically different conclusions than did Berle concerning the consequences flowing from separation of ownership …
Berle’S Vision Beyond Shareholder Interests: Why Investment Bankers Should Have (Some) Personal Liability, Claire Hill, Richard Painter
Berle’S Vision Beyond Shareholder Interests: Why Investment Bankers Should Have (Some) Personal Liability, Claire Hill, Richard Painter
Seattle University Law Review
This essay, published in a symposium on the work of Adolf Berle, approaches the Berle-Dodd debate from the perspective that corporate managers have responsibilities beyond pursuing the interests of shareholders. Stock based executive compensation, designed to align managers’ interests with those of shareholders, has, in the investment banking industry in particular, failed to avert, and may have caused, managers (in this case, bankers) to take excessive risks that in the present financial crisis inflicted great damage on creditors and on society as a whole. We describe here the broad outlines of a proposal that we will discuss in future publications …
The Birth Of Corporate Governance, Harwell Wells
The Birth Of Corporate Governance, Harwell Wells
Seattle University Law Review
Part I of this Article briefly examines the concept of “corporate governance” and argues for dating the concept’s origins to the debates of the 1920s. Part II then moves on to examine early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control. After surveying the historical developments that produced the recognizably modern corporate economy around the turn of the century, it examines early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control, focusing on three major thinkers, Louis D. Brandeis, Walter Lippmann, and Thorstein Veblen. It argues that, while each of these authors examined the separation …
United States V. O'Hagan: Defining The Limits Of Fraud And Deceptive Pretext Under Rule 10b-5, Theodore C. Mccullough
United States V. O'Hagan: Defining The Limits Of Fraud And Deceptive Pretext Under Rule 10b-5, Theodore C. Mccullough
Seattle University Law Review
This Note argues that broadening the present embezzlement model of the Rule 10b- 5 misappropriation theory will more fully reflect both the language and intent of § 10(b) (of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act) and Rule 10b-5, and more importantly accommodate the sophistication of today's insider trading schemes. Part II of this Note examines the uses of inside information both prior to and after the creation of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act, and how § 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 were created to proscribe these uses. Part III examines the language and intent behind § 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 and argues …
The Misappropriation Theory Of Insider Trading: Its Past, Present, And Future, Troy Cichos
The Misappropriation Theory Of Insider Trading: Its Past, Present, And Future, Troy Cichos
Seattle University Law Review
In this Comment, I discuss the evolution and current application of the misappropriation theory of insider trading and argue that it simply strays too far from the fraud tenets of Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5. A thorough understanding of the misappropriation theory is possible only if one understands how it diverges from the classic theory of insider trading. Therefore, in Section II, I discuss the evolution and present doctrine of classic insider trading. The discussion in this Section focuses on major cases in the development of this theory. Section III presents the misappropriation theory of insider trading. Section III focuses …
Definition Of A Security: Risk Capital And Investment Contracts In Washington, Michael E. Stevenson, John J. O'Leary, Iii
Definition Of A Security: Risk Capital And Investment Contracts In Washington, Michael E. Stevenson, John J. O'Leary, Iii
Seattle University Law Review
The addition of the risk capital definition to Washington's securities law will expand regulation to many transactions that in the past were excluded. Although its full application is unforeseeable, the risk capital definition should apply to financing arrangements in the formation of clubs, associations, and cooperatives. Practitioners must be keenly aware that ventures not traditionally defined within Washington's securities regulations many now fall under the risk capital definition of a security.
Unlawful Securities Transactions And Scienter: An Emasculating Requirement, David Strout
Unlawful Securities Transactions And Scienter: An Emasculating Requirement, David Strout
Seattle University Law Review
This comment suggests the proper construction of Washington’s unlawful transactions provision of the recently-adopted modified version of the Uniform Securities Act and rejects scienter as a necessary element of a violation of that provision. The discussion necessitates consideration of federal rule 10b-5, because the rule is the source of the Uniform Act's unlawful transactions provision. The focus, however, is on the inapplicability of the United States Supreme Court's analysis in <em>Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder </em>to the Washington Act's construction.