Securities Law Commons^™

Cryptocurrencies, Nfts, And The Expanding Definition Of "Investment Contract": Has The Sec Already Torpedoed The Howey Test?, David B. Guenther

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

The U.S. Supreme Court in SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. in 1946 famously defined the term “investment contract”—the catch-all term in the definition of “security” in the Securities Act of 1933—to mean (1) an investment of money, (2) in a common enterprise, (3) with an expectation of profits solely from the efforts of others. While the Howey test has endured as the standard definition of an investment contract, the Howey Court did not define the term “common enterprise,” and for more than fifty years, Howey’s common enterprise prong has eroded. Since 2017, the Securities and Exchange Commission has further eroded …

Amending Regulation D'S Accredited-Investor Definition To Allow Natural Persons To Opt Out Of Unwanted Regulatory Protections, John L. Orcutt

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

The Keys To The Kingdom: The Unexpectedly Unsettled Definitions Of Security And Sale And The Overruling Of Chevron, Joel Seligman

Scholarship@WashULaw

This article explores two important unresolved questions for the Federal Securities regulation under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The definition of security and the definition of sale were increasingly contested and potentially unstable before the United States Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overruled the Chevron doctrine.

Securities Regulation And Administrative Deference In The Roberts Court, Eric C. Chaffee

Seattle University Law Review

In A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, A.C. Pritchard and Robert B. Thompson write, “Securities law offers an illuminating window into the Supreme Court’s administrative law jurisprudence over the last century. The securities cases provide one of the most accessible illustrations of key transitions of American law.” A main reason for this is that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a bellwether among administrative agencies, and as a result, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court is a history of administrative law in the Supreme Court of the United States as well.

Stakeholderism Silo Busting, Aneil Kovvali

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The fields of antitrust, bankruptcy, corporate, and securities law are undergoing tumultuous debates. On one side in each field is the dominant view that each field should focus exclusively on a specific constituency—antitrust on consumers, bankruptcy on creditors, corporate law on shareholders, and securities regulation on financial investors. On the other side is a growing insurgency that seeks to broaden the focus to a larger set of stakeholders, including workers, the environment, and political communities. But these conversations have largely proceeded in parallel, with each debate unfolding within the framework and literature of a single field. Studying these debates together …

Cryptocurrency: The Consequences Of A Regulatory Gap In A Rapidly Growing Industry, Claire Sanford

SLU Law Journal Online

Digital assets are largely unregulated, which has led to many investors being defrauded without remedy. Various solutions have been proposed to solve the regulatory gap, but none have been successful in practice. In this article, Claire Sanford discusses how the risks associated with cryptocurrency exchanges are distinct from more traditional investments.

Payment For Order Flow And The Great Missed Opportunity, Joel Seligman

Scholarship@WashULaw

In late January and early February 2021, an astounding story of stock market price volatility captivated the nation. GameStop, a corporation that in recent years had prodigiously lost money – $492 million two years earlier, $296 million the last year for which it reported data – rose from a low of $2.57 to a high of $483. In January 2021 alone, GameStop had risen from a closing price of $17.25 on January 4 to a close of $347.61 on January 27 before falling 44 percent to a close of $193.60 on January 28, rising 68 percent to a close of …

Securities Treatment Of Tokenized Offerings Under U.S. Law, Carol Goforth

Pepperdine Law Review

This article considers how the SEC currently approaches the question of regulating cryptoassets and ICOs. It includes a brief overview and history of cryptotransactions (including problems of terminology), and then looks at the current crypto space to consider the kinds of interests being promoted today in comparison to Bitcoin and the original altcoins. It then examines the traditional approach taken by the SEC with regard to these interests and explains briefly the kinds of compliant offerings that are currently possible. It then covers the range of reasons why a specialized regulatory approach is called for, rather than simply relying on …

Private Enforcement Of Company Law And Securities Regulation In Korea, Hwa-Jin Kim

Book Chapters

This chapter offers a brief overview of the private enforcement of corporate law and securities regulation in Korea, with particular reference to the current legislative efforts in the Korean National Assembly and recent court cases. This chapter also talks about Korea’s ill-fated and misguided adoption of the fraud-on-the-market theory in securities fraud litigation.

Dictation And Delegation In Securities Regulation, Usha Rodrigues

Indiana Law Journal

When Congress undertakes major financial reform, either it dictates the precise con-tours of the law itself or it delegates the bulk of the rule making to an administrative agency. This choice has critical consequences. Making the law self-executing in federal legislation is swift, not subject to administrative tinkering, and less vulnerable than rule making to judicial second-guessing. Agency action is, in contrast, deliberate, subject to ongoing bureaucratic fiddling, and more vulnerable than statutes to judicial challenge.

This Article offers the first empirical analysis of the extent of congressional delegation in securities law from 1970 to the present day, examining nine …

Notes From The Border: Writing Across The Administrative Law/Financial Regulation Divide, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

A central feature – if not the central feature – of legal scholarship today is analysis across divides.

It is surprising, then, how little has been written across the divide that separates administrative law and financial regulation. That is perhaps especially so, given the modest nature of the relevant divide: one that is intra- rather than interdisciplinary, one that operates within rather than across geographic boundaries, and one that involves no temporal dimension but operates entirely within current-day law.

For all the proximity in their interests, targets of study, and even analytical tools, however, scholars of administrative law and of …

Broker-Dealer Law Reform: Financial Intermediaries In A State Of Limbo, Alexander R. Tiktin

Brooklyn Law Review

No abstract provided.

Do Conservative Justices Favor Wall Street: Ideology And The Supreme Court's Securities Regulation Decisions, Marco Ventoruzzo, Johannes W. Fedderke

Faculty Scholarship

The appointment of Supreme Court justices is a politically-charged process and the "ideology" (or "judicial philosophy") of the nominees is perceived as playing a potentially relevant role in their future decision-making. It is fairly easy to intuit that ideology somehow enters the analysis with respect to politically divisive issues such as abortion and procreative rights, sexual conduct, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, gun control, procedural protections for the accused in criminal cases, governmental powers. Many studies have tackled the question of the relevance of the ideology of the justices or appellate judges on these issues, often finding …

The Ban Has Lifted: Now Is The Time To Change The Accredited-Investor Standard, Larissa Lee

Utah Law Review

Lifting the ban on general advertising and general solicitation will ultimately change how emerging companies receive funding. With greater access to previously untapped investors, more new businesses will be able to get on their feet and be successful. This success depends on the regulation of these offerings to ensure they are free of fraud and that investors maintain confidence in the market.

As the standard currently stands, it is likely that the removal of the ban will result in a regulatory gap, which may take advantage of several investors. The accredited investor standard should be changed to reflect not only …

Rebalancing Private Placement Regulation, William K. Sjostrom, Jr.

Seattle University Law Review

Regulating securities offerings entails balancing investor protection and capital formation. Inevitably, this balance gets upset. As financial markets evolve, Congress passes new legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopts new rules, and the courts issue unanticipated opinions. These events upset the balance because they happen in an uncoordinated and haphazard manner and oftentimes produce unintended consequences.The Article proceeds as follows. To set the stage, Part II provides background on the Securities Act and describes the differences between public offerings and private placements. Part III explains why rebalancing private placement regulation may be warranted. Part IV offers proposed statutory language …

Foreword, Marc I. Steinberg

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The New Uniform Statute Of Limitations For Federal Securities Fraud Actions: Its Evolution, Its Impact, And A Call For Reform, Anthony Michael Sabino

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mismatch: The Misuse Of Market Efficiency In Market Manipulation Class Actions, Charles R. Korsmo

Faculty Publications

Plaintiffs commonly bring two distinct types of claims under Section 1(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934: 1) claims of material misrepresentations or omissions; and 2) claims of trade-based market manipulation. Despite the distinctive features of the two types of claims, courts have tended to treat them identically when applying the “fraud on the market” doctrine. In particular, courts have required both types of plaintiffs to make identical showings that the relevant security traded in an “efficient market” in order to gain a presumption of reliance. The reasons for requiring such a showing by plaintiffs in a misrepresentation case …

Managing Corporate Federalism: The Least-Bad Approach To The Shareholder Bylaw Debate, Christopher M. Bruner

Scholarly Works

Over recent decades, shareholders in public corporations have increasingly sought to augment their own power - and, correlatively, to limit the power of boards - through creative use of corporate bylaws. The bylaws lend themselves to such efforts because enacting, amending, and repealing bylaws are essentially the only corporate governance actions that shareholders can undertake unilaterally. In this Article I examine thecontested nature of bylaws, the fundamental issues of corporate power and purpose that they implicate, and the differing ways in which state and federal lawmakers and regulators may impact the debate regarding thescope of the shareholders' bylaw authority.

The …

Measuring And Representing The Knowledge Economy: Accounting For Economic Reality Under The Intangibles Paradigm, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

ExpressO

Enron has become a symbol: a symbol of excess, an illustration of how a company can base its business on fraudulent, deceptive or even largely non-existent business transactions. The collapse of Enron had a significant impact on the adoption of legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was intended to prevent the types of fraudulent behavior that occurred at Enron. However, Sarbanes-Oxley and other responses to the business practices of many companies during the late 1990s do not fully address some of the underlying factors that permitted and in fact encouraged the Enrons of the world to represent their companies …

Comparisons Among Firms: (When) Do They Justify Mandatory Disclosure?, Sharon Hannes

ExpressO

Comparisons among firms play a major role in securities analysis. This essay asks if this fact justifies the mandatory nature of securities regulation. Once a firm approaches the public securities markets, federal securities regulations compel it to disclose financial information to the public. A seminal theory argues that firms would not otherwise commit to maintain optimal disclosure levels, since a disclosing firm bears all disclosure costs but does not gain all disclosure benefits.

This paper examines the robustness of this argument in relation to disclosure benefits which arise from comparisons among firms. Financial data of peer firms allows shareholders to …

Securities Regulation In The Electronic Era: Private Placements And The Internet, Todd A. Mazur

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Patching A Hole In The Jobs Act: How And Why To Rewrite The Rules That Require Firms To Make Periodic Disclosures, Michael D. Guttentag

Indiana Law Journal

Provisions in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 have made it much easier for firms to avoid federal periodic disclosure obligations, but these provisions were enacted based upon a virtually nonexistent legislative record and upended rules established only after careful consideration almost fifty years earlier. Determining when firms should be required to comply with federal periodic disclosure requirements is best done in the context of a broader understanding of the history and economics of periodic disclosure regulation. This Article provides such an understanding.

The history of periodic disclosure regulation in the United States is traced back to its …

Fasb V. Iasc: Are The Structure And Standard Setting Process At The Iasc Adequate For The Securities And Exchange Commission To Accept International Accounting Standards For Cross-Border Offerings? , Charles Canfield

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This comment compares and contrasts the IASC's structure and stan- dard setting process with the structure and process for promulgating ac- counting standards of the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB"), the standard setter for the United States. The purpose of this comparison is to determine whether or not the IASC's structure and process for standard development are adequate for the development of acceptable core standards. This comparison uses FASB, not for the purpose of imposing FASB as the standard setter for the world, but for the purpose of comparing the IASC with an established long-standing standard setter, and because the …

The Mandatory Disclosure System And Foreign Firms: Securities Regulation In The Apec Countries., Joel Seligman

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article examines the disclosure requirements for foreign and domestic securities imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, paying special attention to the balance between investor protection and the free flow of capital internationally. As the world economy becomes increasingly global, foreign issuers and their governments, who in the past have had to meet more stringent requirements to issue their securities in the United States, are pushing for less restrictive treatment. This Article describes the progress that has been made towards this end.

The Obsolescence Of Wall Street: A Contextual Approach To The Evolving Structure Of Federal Securities Regulation, Joel Seligman

Scholarship@WashULaw

As a matter of analytical style, this article illustrates a contextualist approach. For a considerable period of time, the dominant analytical style in corporate and securities .law has been a variant of economic, or law and economics, analysis. The virtue of this type of analysis is that it focuses on what its authors deem to be crucial variables and reaches conclusions derived from the core of a specific legal problem. The defect of this type of analysis is that so much is assumed or often assumed away.

The Disinterested Person: An Alternative Approach To Shareholder Derivative Litigation., Joel Seligman

Scholarship@WashULaw

Recently I had the opportunity to apply an unused procedure in a shareholder derivative litigation. In 1989 Michigan amended its Business Corporation Act to allow a court under specified circumstances to appoint a "disinterested person" to perform fact gathering functions similar to those of a German investigative judge. In 1991 I was appointed to be the disinterested person in a derivative litigation involving Rospatch Corporation. The experience persuaded me that compared to litigation and the special litigation committee, the disinterested person approach may often have significant advantages in terms of reduction of litigation costs, procedural fairness, and protection of shareholders.

Securities Regulation - Financial Advisor As A Bidder In Actions Arising Under The Williams Act, Edward J. Yocum Jr.

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Basic, Inc. V. Levinson, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Gould V. Ruefenacht, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.