Securities Law Commons^™

Global Investor Protection: Securities Law Enforcement Around The World, Matthew Diller, Martin Gelter, Eugenio J. Cardenas, Merritt B. Fox, Geoffrey Jarvis, Pierre-Henri Conac, Todd Cosenza, Jill Fisch, Yuliya Guseva, Elad Roisman, Sean Griffith

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Short And Distort, Joshua Mitts

Faculty Scholarship

Pseudonymous attacks on public companies are followed by stock price declines and sharp reversals. These patterns are likely driven by manipulative stock options trading by pseudonymous authors. Among 1,720 pseudonymous attacks on mid- and large-cap firms from 2010 to 2017, I identify over $20.1 billion in mispricing. Reputation theory suggests these reversals persist because pseudonymity allows manipulators to switch identities without accountability.

Embrace The Sec, Usha Rodrigues

Scholarly Works

Securities law traditionally only permits corporations that have registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and completed an initial public offering (IPO) to sell equity to the general public—often a long, expensive process. Initial coin offering (ICOs) emerged in 2013 as a fundraising tool for non-public blockchain-based companies to raise billions of dollars while circumventing the SEC and public offering process altogether. But their early success brought the attention of the SEC, and in 2017 the SEC asserted the right to regulate ICOs. Since then, U.S. ICO promoters have struggled to avoid the SEC’s assertion of jurisdiction, contorting their …

Crowdfunding Issuers In The United States, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

Startup companies can now legally sell shares of stock, bonds, or other securities to the broad public using equity crowdfunding, a new type of online capital market modeled on Kickstarter and other reward crowdfunding websites. Through equity crowdfunding, entrepreneurs can go directly to the broad public (the “crowd”) for investment, without having to go through the usual (and costly) process of an initial public offering (IPO). Equity crowdfunding thus offers a chance for all entrepreneurs, regardless of their physical location, gender, or anything else, to solicit investors and raise capital.

In 2012, new federal legislation—the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) …

A New System Of Electronic Chattel Paper: Notification Of Assignment, Thomas E. Plank

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Disclosure's Purpose, Hillary A. Sale

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States securities regulatory infrastructure requires disclosure of a wide array of information both by and about covered companies. The basic purpose of the disclosures is to level the playing field – for investors, for issuers, and for the public. Although investor protection is the disclosure goal often touted, this article develops the purposes of disclosure extending beyond investors to issuers and the public. Indeed, the disclosure system is designed to level the playing field for issuers— addressing confidentiality concerns, for example. In addition, the system helps to promote confidence in the markets, which, in turn, enables growth and …

Has Regulation Affected The High Frequency Trading Market?, Kevin O'Connell

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

As technology rapidly advances society, there are a few industries that have not been drastically impacted by disruptive technology. The financial markets are no different. Over the past ten years, algorithmic trading has quickly revolutionized the financial markets and continues to dominate an industry that for many years remained largely uninfluenced by society’s technological advances. Algorithmic trading is “a type of trading done with the use of mathematical formulas” and market data “run by powerful computers” to execute trades. One of the most commonly used platforms of algorithmic trading is high frequency trading. High frequency trading (“HFT”) uses a computerized …

Smart Contracts In Traditional Contract Law, Or: The Law Of The Vending Machine, Jonathan Rohr

Cleveland State Law Review

Smart contracts are the new norm, yet state legislatures and courts have not developed set rules and answers to legal disputes that these contracts create. Is traditional contract law sufficient? Or should we create an entirely new legislative or common law scheme to deal with these disputes? The common law has proven to be successful in dealing with new technologies and contracts, particularly because of its flexibility. Although a major overhaul may be in the future, there are still solutions that we can find today with the current legal landscape given the state of contract law and its evolution over …

Engineered Credit Default Swaps: Innovative Or Manipulative?, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Credit default swaps (“CDS”) are, once again, making waves. Maligned for their role in the 2008 financial crisis and condemned by the Vatican, investors are once more utilizing CDS to achieve results of questionable market benefit. A CDS is a financial contract that allows investors to “bet” on whether a borrower will default on its loan. However, rather than waiting to see how their bets pan out, some CDS investors are collaborating with financially distressed borrowers to guarantee the profitability of their CDS positions—“engineering” the CDS’ outcome. Under the CDS contract, these collaborations are not prohibited, yet they have roiled …

The Eu’S Struggles With Collective Action For Securities Fraud: An American Perspective, Dan Morrissey

Texas A&M Law Review

Notwithstanding the apparent exit of the United Kingdom, the European Union (“EU”) has grown in membership and power since its modest beginnings after World War II, now rivaling the U.S. in economic strength. With the goal of promoting the security and prosperity of all the citizens of the countries that belong to it, the EU is pressing ahead to adopt laws that will promote their political and financial integration. Along those lines, it has also recently acknowledged a deficiency in the legal systems of its member states when it comes to allowing collective actions for victims of various types of …

How Far Does The Rabbit Hole Go: The Interaction Between Set-Off Rights And The Voidable Preference Hypothetical In Chapter 7 Liquidation, Josh Rutstein

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

This Note highlights the tension between Section 547 and Section 553 of the Bankruptcy Code, with specific attention paid to the interaction between set-off rights and the hypothetical liquidation invoked by a court in a voidable preference action, and proposes adopting the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning as a bankruptcy court standard when confronted with a similar conflict between the formalized tests in Sections 547 and 553, in an attempt to achieve a more equitable outcome.

Automating Securities Class Actions Settlements, Jessica M. Erickson

Law Faculty Publications

Securities class actions are supposed to vindicate the rights of investors injured by corporate fraud. Yet, despite multimillion- or even multibillion- dollar settlements, many injured investors never receive a dime in compensation. To receive money from a settlement in a securities class action, investors must comply with a cumbersome claims process, documenting their transactions in the defendant corporation’s stock and detailing their losses. Faced with this hurdle, many investors never claim their shares of the settlement funds. Courts continue to insist that investors comply with cumbersome claims processes because they do not think they have another way to accurately identify …

Fintech And The Innovation Trilemma, Yesha Yadav, Chris Brummer

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Whether in response to roboadvising, artificial intelligence, or crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, regulators around the world have made it a top policy priority to supervise the exponential growth of financial technology (or "fintech") in the post-Crisis era. However, applying traditional regulatory strategies to new technological ecosystems has proven conceptually difficult. Part of the challenge lies in the tradeoffs involved in regulating innovations that could conceivably both help and hurt consumers and market participants alike. Problems also arise from the common assumption that today's fintech is a mere continuation of the story of innovation that has shaped finance for centuries.

This Article …

Boilerplate And The Impact Of Disclosure In Securities Dealmaking, Jeremy Mcclane

Vanderbilt Law Review

Capital markets dealmaking, like many kinds of business transactions, is built on a foundation of copied and recycled language what many call boilerplate. Regulators and the bar periodically call for less reliance on boilerplate, but despite these pressures, boilerplate remains a fixture of ever-growing securities disclosures. This Article explores why boilerplate persists and how it affects investors, showing that boilerplate may have a more complex role than commonly recognized. This Article does so by developing a theory on the effect of boilerplate in securities disclosure-a context that is little studied despite a wealth of literature on boilerplate in other settings--and …

Financial Contracting With The Crowd, Usha Rodrigues

Scholarly Works

Equity crowdfunding is broken. The current model imposes too many burdens on entrepreneurs in exchange for too little money. For alternative models, this Article looks to the time-tested venture capital financial contract, and the recent experience of initial coin offerings (ICOs). ICOs made headlines over the past two years, as the means by which blockchain technology companies raised billions of dollars to launch new cryptocurrency ventures. Although their novelty as a monetary and investing device is well known, ICOs also presented significant, unappreciated insights into financial contracting.

ICOs furnished an unprecedented experiment into how bargains would look if entrepreneurs raised …

Revolving Elites: The Unexplored Risk Of Capturing The Sec, James D. Cox, Randall S. Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

Fears have abounded for years that the sweet spot for capture of regulatory agencies is the "revolving door" whereby civil servants migrate from their roles as regulators to private industry. Recent scholarship on this topic has examined whether America's watchdog for securities markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is hobbled by the long-standing practices of its enforcement staff exiting their jobs at the Commission and migrating to lucrative private sector employment where they represent those they once regulated. The research to date has been inconclusive on whether staff revolving door practices have weakened the SEC' s verve. In this …

Mandatory Disclosure In Primary Markets, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

Mandatory disclosure—the idea that companies must be legally required to disclose certain, specified information to public investors—is the first principle of modern securities law. Despite the high costs it imposes, mandatory disclosure has been well defended by legal scholars on two theoretical grounds: ‘Agency costs’ and ‘information underproduction.’ While these two concepts are a good fit for secondary markets (where investors trade securities with one another), this Article shows that they are largely irrelevant in the context of primary markets (where companies offer securities directly to investors). The surprising result is that primary offerings—such as an IPO—may not require mandatory …

Online Arbitration As A Remedy For Crowdfunding Fraud, C. Steven Bradford

Florida State University Law Review

It is now legal to sell securities to the general public in unregistered, crowdfunded offerings. But offerings pursuant to the new federal crowdfunding exemption pose a serious risk of fraud. The buyers will be mostly small, unsophisticated investors, the issuers will be mostly small startups about whom little is known, and crowdfunded offerings lack some of the protections available in registered offerings. Some of the requirements of the exemption may reduce the incidence of fraud, but there will undoubtedly be fraudulent offerings. An effective antifraud remedy is needed to compensate investors and help deter wrongdoers. But because of the small …

The Leidos Mixup And The Misunderstood Duty To Disclose In Securities Law, Matthew C. Turk, Karen E. Woody

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article concerns the recent Supreme Court case, Leidos,Inc. v. Indiana Public Retirement System (Leidos), and examines the broader issues that it raised for securities law. The consensus among scholars and practitioners is that Leidos presented a direct conflict among the circuit courts over a core question of securities law—when a failure to comply with the SEC’s disclosure requirements can constitute fraud under Rule 10b-5. This Article provides a much different interpretation of the case. It begins by demonstrating that the circuit split which is presumed to have brought Leidos to the Supreme Court does not in fact exist. …

Insider Tainting: Strategic Tipping Of Material Nonpublic Information, Andrew Verstein

Northwestern University Law Review

Insider trading law is meant to be a shield, protecting the market and investors from unscrupulous traders, but it can also be a sword. Insofar as we penalize trading on the basis of material, nonpublic information, it becomes possible to share information strategically in order to disable or constrain innocent investors. A hostile takeover can be averted, or a bidding war curtailed, because recipients of such information must then refrain from trading. This Article offers the first general account of “insider tainting,” an increasingly pervasive phenomenon of weaponizing insider trading law.

Optimal Issuer Disclosure Of Opinions, Wendy Gerwick Couture

Articles

This Article adds to the scholarly literature about the optimal level of disclosure by issuers of securities by proposing a new theoretical framework that encompasses not only the choice between silence and disclosure, which has been widely discussed, but also the subsidiary decision between disclosure as an opinion and as a statement of fact, which has been ignored. This framework informs the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ongoing review of mandatory disclosure rules and contextualizes the potential impacts of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Omnicare, Inc. v. Laborers District Council Construction Industry Pension Fund,1 which clarified that differential liability standards …

Insider Trading And The Myth Of Market Confidence, John P. Anderson

Journal Articles

This Article challenges the validity of the market-confidence claim as a justification for the regulation of insider trading on two grounds. First, insofar as it relies on a sociopsychological claim-that most investors perceive insider trading as economically harmful or morally wrong-it is subject to the problem of false consciousness (i.e., the psychological claim could be true though the shared belief is demonstrably false). Second, even if the problem of false consciousness is set aside, the market-confidence argument's empirical claims of a chilling effect among potential investors must be proven, not simply assumed.

Guardians Of The Galaxy: How Shareholder Lawyers Won Big For Their Clients And Vindicated The Integrity Of Our Economy, Daniel J. Morrissey

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Securities class actions are the most economically significant form of litigation. Highly skilled lawyers expend huge sums and relentless efforts in these matters but because of the costs involved and the potential for enormous liability very few of them ever make it to trial. This Article is the story of one that did, a mammoth fraud where a jury returned a $1.5 billion verdict that, with interest, increased to almost $2.5 billion by the time the case reached the appellate court.

There the Court upheld the shareholders’ theory that their damages could be measured by the excessive amounts they had …

Whistling Loud And Clear: Applying Chevron To Subsection 21f Of Dodd–Frank, Shaun M. Bennett

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Note addresses a circuit court split arising from a portion of the anti-retaliation provisions in the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Subsection 21F’s retaliation prohibitions apply to those employers whose employees make required or protected disclosures under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) or any other rule or regulation under the SEC’s jurisdiction. SOX provides anti -retaliation protections — similar to those available under Dodd–Frank — for employees of publicly traded companies who report misconduct. However, SOX expressly affords protections to those who provide information to “a Federal regulatory or law enforcement agency; any Member of …

Canons Of Construction For Dysfunctional Statutes: A Comment On Bennett, Paul G. Mahoney

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comment On Whistling Loud And Clear: Applying Chevron To Subsection 21f Of Dodd–Frank, Sarah C. Haan

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Commodification Of Cryptocurrency, Neil Tiwari

Michigan Law Review

Cryptocurrencies are digital tokens built on blockchain technology. This allows for a product that is fully decentralized, with no need for a third-party intermediary like a government or financial institution. Cryptocurrency creators use initial coin offerings (ICOs) to raise capital to build their tokens. Cryptocurrency ICOs are problematic because they do not fit neatly within either of two traditional categories—securities or commodities. Each of these categories has their own regulatory agency: the SEC for securities and the CFTC for commodities. At first blush, ICOs seem to be a sale of securities subject to regulation by the SEC, but this is …

Does Shareholder Voting Matter? Evidence From The Takeover Market, Paul Mason, Usha Rodrigues, Mike Stegemoller, Steven Utke

Scholarly Works

Voting rights are a basic shareholder-protection mechanism. Outside of the core voting requirements state law imposes (election of directors and votes on fundamental changes), federal law grants shareholders additional voting rights. But these rights introduce concomitant costs into corporate governance. Each grant of a voting right thus invites the question: is the benefit achieved worth the cost the vote imposes?

The question is not merely a theoretical one. Recently the SEC, concerned about Nasdaq’s potential weakening of shareholder voting protections, has lamented that little evidence exists on the value of the shareholder vote. This Article provides that evidence. It examines …

Seeking An Objective For Regulating Insider Trading Through Texas Gulf Sulphur, James D. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

Data summarized in the opening of this article document that inside trading is a growth industry. And, as deals get ever bigger, the growth curve becomes steeper as more the data confirms intuition that the more who know about a good thing the more who will seek to harvest its benefits. Even though insider trading appears to have thrived during the fifty years after Texas Gulf Sulphur, we gather in this symposium to celebrate the decision. But why? As developed below, the Second Circuit’s landmark decision gave way to the Supreme Court’s erection of a fiduciary framework that this article …

Morality And Securities Fraud, Jayme Herschkopf

Marquette Law Review

Securities fraud features prominently in conversations about financial reform, and for good reason. In addition to the disproportionate number of securities fraud lawsuits and government actions filed every year, securities fraud case law is frequently consulted as an analytical aid for other types of corporate fraud. And yet, in discussing the interpretation and application of the securities laws, scholars, judges, and lawmakers alike have largely overlooked a feature of securities fraud that could offer significant assistance in many challenging areas: namely, that securities fraud, including civil securities fraud, has a pronounced moral dimension.

This Article explores the role that moral …