Banking and Finance Law Commons^™

Conceptualizing Cryptolaw, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Sweden transfers its real property recording system to the blockchain, a software protocol that enables public, cryptographically secure transaction verification without reliance upon a trusted third party. Dubai plans to issue blockchain-based government documents. The United States Department of Health and Human Services investigates blockchain-based systems for managing health data. Illinois explores blockchain-based applications for use in the Illinois government. News of governments and public-private partnerships developing blockchain-based legal applications increasingly splash across the headlines; however the law-makers using blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) systems to implement legal processes do not systematically consider the broader implications of their …

Distributed Governance, Carla L. Reyes, Nizan Geslevich Packin, Bejamin Edwards

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Distributed ledger technology enables disruption of traditional business organizations by introducing new business entities without the directors and officers of traditional corporate entities. Although these emerging entities offer intriguing possibilities, distributed entities may suffer significant collective action problems and expose investors to catastrophic regulatory and governance risks. Our essay examines key considerations for stakeholders and argues that distributed entities must be carefully structured to function effectively.

This essay breaks new ground by critically examining distributed entities. We argue that a distributed model is most appropriate when DLT solves a unique corporate governance problem. We caution against ignoring the lessons painstakingly …

Ancillary Agreements In Real Estate Transactions, Andrew R. Berman, Barry Hines, Everett Ward

Other Publications

This article discusses certain ancillary but important documents in the context of two common real estate transactions: mortgage loan financings and acquisitions of income-producing real estate. In particular, the article analyzes current case law and drafting considerations relating to estoppel certificates, certified rent rolls and subordination, non-disturbance agreements (SNDAs). In addition, the article examines due diligence issues for the lender and buyer. Note: This article was co-authored with Barry Hines, Partner, Frost, Brown, Todd LLC and Everett Ward, Partner, Quarrels & Brady LLP and initially presented at the Spring Meeting of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers (ACREL).

The Puzzle Of Pdvsa Bond Prices, Paolo Colla, Anna Gelpern, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

Market reports in the summer of 2016 suggest that Venezuela is on the brink of default on upwards of $65 billion in debt. That debt comprises of bonds issued directly by the sovereign and those issued by the state-owned oil company PDVSA. Based on the bond contracts and other legal factors, it is not clear which of these two categories of bonds would fare better in the event of a restructuring. However, market observers are convinced — and we agree — that legal and contractual differences would likely impact the payouts on the bonds if Venezuela defaults. Using a comparison …

The Remaking Of Wall Street, Andrew F. Tuch

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article critically examines the transformation of the financial services industry during and since the Financial Crisis of 2007–2009. This transformation has been marked by the demise of the major investment banks and the related rise of a set of powerful players known as private equity firms or alternative asset managers – pools of assets structured as private funds. First, this Article argues that private equity firms now mirror investment banks in their mix of activities; ethos of entrepreneurialism, innovation, and risk-taking; role as “shadow banks”; and overall power and influence.

These similarities might suggest that private equity firms pose …

The Eurozone Debt Crisis And The European Banking Union: Hard Choices, Intolerable Dilemmas, And The Question Of Sovereignty, Emilios Avgouleas, Douglas W. Arner

The International Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The Black Hole Problem In Commercial Boilerplate, Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Rote use of a standard form contract term can erode its meaning, a phenomenon made worse when the process of encrustation introduces various formulations of the term. The foregoing process, when it occurs, weakens the communicative properties of boilerplate terms, leading some terms to lose much, if not all, meaning. In theory, if a clause is completely emptied of meaning through this process it can create a contractual “black hole.” The more frequent and thus potentially more pervasive problem arises when, as the term loses meaning, random variations in language appear and persist, resulting in what we term a “grey …

From Territorial To Monetary Sovereignty, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

State sovereignty is closely intertwined with, but not limited to, control over territory and people. It has long been recognized that control over monetary affairs is a critical part of genuine sovereignty. In this Article, I go a step further and argue that the relevance and importance of territorial versus monetary sovereignty has shifted in favor of the latter. This shift goes hand in hand with the rise of credit-based financial systems. Such systems depend, in the last instance, on backstopping by an entity with control over its own money supply and no binding survival constraints. Only states with monetary …

Investor-Driven Financial Innovation, Kathryn Judge

Faculty Scholarship

Financial regulations often encourage or require market participants to hold particular types of financial assets. One unintended consequence of this form of regulation is that it can spur innovation to increase the effective supply of favored assets. This Article examines when and how changes in the law prompt the spread of “investor-driven financial innovations.” Weaving together theory, recent empirical findings, and illustrations, this Article provides an overview of why investors prefer certain types of financial assets to others, how markets respond, and how the spread of investor-driven innovations can transform the structure of the financial system. This examination suggests that …

Information Gaps And Shadow Banking, Kathryn Judge

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that information gaps – pockets of information that are pertinent and knowable but not currently known – are a byproduct of shadow banking and a meaningful source of systemic risk. It lays the foundation for this claim by juxtaposing the regulatory regime governing the shadow banking system with the incentives of the market participants who populate that system. Like banks, shadow banks rely heavily on short-term debt claims designed to obviate the need for the holder to engage in any meaningful information gathering or analysis. The securities laws that prevail in the capital markets, however, both presume …

Finance In The Courtroom: Appraising Its Growing Pains, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

This short essay provides an overview of the current state of finance in corporate law, emphasizing its role in a series of pending appraisal cases at the Delaware Supreme Court.

Principal Costs: A New Theory For Corporate Law And Governance, Zohar Goshen, Richard Squire

Faculty Scholarship

The problem of managerial agency costs dominates debates in corporate law. Many leading scholars advocate reforms that would reduce agency costs by forcing firms to allocate more control to shareholders. Such proposals disregard the costs that shareholders avoid by delegating control to managers and voluntarily restricting their own control rights. This Essay introduces principal-cost theory, which posits that each firm’s optimal governance structure minimizes the sum of principal costs, produced when investors exercise control, and agent costs, produced when managers exercise control. Both principal costs and agent costs can arise from honest mistakes (which generate competence costs) and …

Ask The Professor: Will The Recent Supreme Court Case In Salman Result In More Cftc Enforcement Actions Charging Insider Trading?, Ronald H. Filler, Jerry W. Markham

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Calling On The Cfpb For Help: Telling Stories And Consumer Protection, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Since it began operating in 2011, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has handled more than a million complaints regarding consumer financial product and services. Beginning in June 2015, the CFPB began publishing consumers’ narratives submitted with their complaints. This Article analyses a random sample of 5,000 of these narratives to assess how people engage with the complaint mechanism in light of the CFPB’s role in processing complaints. I find that people predominately use the complaint function for two distinct purposes: to express their anger and frustration about companies’ practices, or to express sadness and fear about how companies’ practices …

The Importance Of Being Standard, Anna Gelpern

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Contract standardisation in the sovereign debt market saves time and money in preparing documents and endows widely-used terms with a shared public meaning, which in turn saves investors the costs of acquiring information, facilitates secondary market trading and reduces the scope for mistakes in the judicial interpretation of contract terms. Sovereign debt issuers and investors claim to value standardisation and list it as an important contractual objective. Issuers generally insist that their bond contracts are standard and reflect market practice. Variations from past practice and market norm must be explained in disclosure documents and through market outreach. Standardisation is not …

Big Bank Boards: The Case For Heightened Administrative Enforcement, Heidi Mandanis Schooner

Scholarly Articles

This article first considers the possible liability of the JP Morgan board in the London Whale matter. This discussion is not meant to assign liability in that case. Rather, the London Whale episode is considered as a springboard to a broader discussion of big bank officer and director liability. While it may be tempting to shrug off the regulatory implications of the London Whale episode because the losses did not threaten the solvency of JP Morgan, the significance of such management failures should not be ignored. Effective management of large banks is essential to financial stability. The type of poor …

Rethinking Corporate Governance For A Bondholder Financed, Systemically Risky World, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

This Article makes two arguments that, combined, demonstrate an important synergy: first, including bondholders in corporate governance could help to reduce systemic risk because bondholders are more risk averse than shareholders; second, corporate governance should include bondholders because bonds now dwarf equity as a source of corporate financing and bond prices are increasingly tied to firm performance.

Contractual Arbitrage, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Contracts are inevitably incomplete. And standard-form or boilerplate commercial contracts are especially likely to be incomplete because they are approximations; they are not tailored to the needs of particular deals. Not only do these contracts contain gaps but, in an attempt to reduce incompleteness, they often contain clauses with vague or ambiguous terms. Terms with indeterminate meaning present opportunities for strategic behavior well after a contract has been concluded. This linguistic uncertainty in standard form commercial contracts creates an opportunity for “contractual arbitrage”: parties may argue, ex post, that the uncertainties in expression mean something that the contracting parties, ex …

The Financial Crisis And Credit Unavailability: Cause Or Effect?, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Although the relationship between credit availability and financial decline leading to the global financial crisis was somewhat interactive, a loss of credit availability appears to have caused the financial crisis more than the reverse. The potential for credit unavailability to cause a financial crisis suggests at least three lessons: (i) because credit availability is dependent on financial markets as well as banks, regulation should protect the viability of both credit sources; (ii) diversifying sources of credit might increase financial stability if each credit source is robust and does not create a liquidity glut or inappropriately weaken central bank control; and …

Variation In Boilerplate: Rational Design Or Random Mutation?, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Standard contract doctrine presumes that sophisticated parties choose their terminology carefully because they want courts or counterparts to understand what they intended. The implication of this “Rational Design” model of rational behavior is that courts should pay careful attention to the precise phrasing of contracts. Using a study of the sovereign bond market, we examine the Rational Design model as applied to standard-form contracting. In NML v. Argentina, federal courts in New York attached importance to the precise phrasing of the boilerplate contracts at issue. The industry promptly condemned the decision for a supposedly erroneous interpretation of a variant of …