Business Organizations Law Commons^™

Corporate Law In The Shanghai People's Courts, 1992-2008: Judicial Autonomy In A Contemporary Authoritarian State, Nicholas C. Howson

Articles

In late 2005 China adopted a largely rewritten Company Law that radically increased the role of courts. This study, based on a review of more than 1000 Company Law-related disputes reported between 1992 and 2008 and extensive interactions with PRC officials and sitting judges, evaluates how the Shanghai People's Court system has fared over 15 years in corporate law adjudication. Although the Shanghai People's Courts show generally increasing technical competence and even intimations of political independence, their path toward institutional autonomy is inconsistent. Through 2006, the Shanghai Court system demonstrated significantly increased autonomy. After 2006 and enactment of the new …

Reflections On Section 5 Of The Ftc Act And The Ftc's Case Against Intel, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

The Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC’s”) unprecedented enforcement action against Intel raises profound issues concerning the scope of the FTC’s powers to give a construction to Section 5 of the FTC Act that goes beyond the substantive reach of the Sherman Act. While I have urged the FTC to assert such independence from the Sherman Act, this is the wrong case to make a break. Indeed, if anything, Intel poses a risk of seriously setting back the development of an independent Section 5 power by provoking a hostile appellate court to rebuke the FTC’s effort and cabin the FTC’s powers in …

Backdated Stock Options Ownership Impact On The Corporation, Management, & Shareholders, Karen Cascini, Alan Delfavero

WCBT Faculty Publications

In the post-Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOx) world, there has been an unprecedented crackdown on fraudulent activity occurring within corporate America. During recent years, many companies have granted stock options to their executives and employees as part of compensation packages. While the issuance of stock options as a component of compensation is considered to be a legal practice, corruption has taken this corporate resource to unlawful heights. Recently, numerous corporations have been in the news for potentially backdating stock options. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to distinguish between legal and illegal aspects of backdating stock options, and to examine the …

Conceptualizing The Home State Duty To Protect Human Rights, Sara Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The Special Representative to the UN Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights (SRSG) has identified the State duty to protect against human rights abuses by non-State actors, including business, as one of the fundamental pillars of the Framework for Business and Human Rights [Framework].1 The Framework “rests on differentiated but complementary responsibilities”, and is comprised of three “core principles”: the State duty to protect, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and the need for more effective access to remedies.2 However, the jurisdictional scope of the State duty to protect is disputed. According to the SRSG, international law provides that …

Subverting Shareholder Rights: Lessons From News Corp.'S Migration To Delaware, Jennifer G. Hill

Vanderbilt Law Review

Convergence theory and shareholder empowerment represent two major debates in contemporary corporate governance. A pervasive underlying assumption in these debates is that a high level of corporate governance homogeneity exists within the common law world in relation to shareholder rights. This Article challenges that assumption through a detailed case study of the decision by News Corporation ("News Corp.") to move from Australia to Delaware. As events surrounding News Corp.'s reincorporation illustrate, although there are undoubtedly basic similarities between corporate law in the United States and in other common law jurisdictions, there are also fascinating, but underappreciated, differences.

In late 2007, …

Shareholder Democracy And The Curious Turn Toward Board Primacy, Grant M. Hayden, Matthew T. Bodie

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Corporate law is consumed with a debate over shareholder democracy. The conventional wisdom counsels that shareholders should have more voice in corporate governance, in order to reduce agency costs and provide democratic legitimacy. A second set of theorists, described as “board primacists,” advocates against greater shareholder democracy and in favor of increased board discretion. These theorists argue that shareholders need to delegate their authority in order to provide the board with the proper authority to manage the enterprise and avoid short-term decision making.

In the last few years, the classical economic underpinnings of corporate law have been destabilized by a …

Iss Recommendations And Mutual Fund Voting On Proxy Proposals, Randall S. Thomas, James Cotter, Alan Palmiter

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article analyzes mutual fund voting data from 2003-2008, the first five proxy seasons for which this data is available, and seeks to identify the extent to which mutual funds vote consistently with the voting recom- mendations of RiskMetrics' ISS Corporate Governance Services (ISS). We compare voting by mutual funds to voting by all shareholders during this time period and then focus on mutual fund voting on non-election and non-routine proxy proposals-both those submitted by management and by shareholders. The questions we examine are: (1) Over the past five voting seasons, have mutual funds (and shareholders generally) voted on proxy …

An Arm's Length Solution To The Shareholder Loan Tax Puzzle, Wayne M. Gazur

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Primer On Protecting Tax Losses From A Section 382 Ownership Change, Mark C. Van Deusen

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Corporate Governance Ii – Accountability Rules, Franklin A. Gevurtz

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Supply Chains And Porous Boundaries: The Disaggregation Of Legal Services, Milton C. Regan, Palmer T. Heenan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The economic downturn has had significant effects on law firms, and is causing many of them to rethink some basic assumptions about how they operate. In important respects, however, the downturn has simply intensified the effects of some deeper trends that preceded it, which are likely to continue after any recovery that may occur.

This paper explores one of these trends, which is corporate client insistence that law firms “disaggregate” their services into discrete tasks that can be delegated to the least costly providers who can perform them. With advances in communications technology, there is increasing likelihood that some of …

The Case For Employee Referenda On Transformative Transactions As Shareholder Proposals, Matthew T. Bodie

All Faculty Scholarship

This Comment describes and advocates for employee referenda as implemented through a SEC Rule 14a-8 shareholder proposal. The proposal provides for a nonbinding referendum amongst all employees whenever the corporation's shareholders must vote to approve a merger, acquisition, sale of substantially all assets, or other transformative transaction. The purpose of the referendum is to provide employees with a voice in the transaction and to provide shareholders with a mechanism for tapping into employee sentiment. Because the referendum would be nonbinding, it is best viewed as an informational tool for shareholders and employees to use in policing management's transactions. Given the …

Shareholder Democracy And The Curious Turn Toward Board Primacy, Grant M. Hayden, Matthew T. Bodie

All Faculty Scholarship

Corporate law is consumed with a debate over shareholder democracy. The conventional wisdom counsels that shareholders should have more voice in corporate governance, in order to reduce agency costs and provide democratic legitimacy. A second set of theorists, described as “board primacists,” advocates against greater shareholder democracy and in favor of increased board discretion. These theorists argue that shareholders need to delegate their authority in order to provide the board with the proper authority to manage the enterprise and avoid short-term decision making.

In the last few years, the classical economic underpinnings of corporate law have been destabilized by a …

Debunking The Purchaser Welfare Account Of Section 2 Of The Sherman Act: How Harvard Brought Us A Total Welfare Standard And Why We Should Keep It, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

The last several years have seen a vigorous debate among antitrust scholars and practitionersa bout the appropriates tandardf or evaluating the conduct of monopolists under section 2 of the Sherman Act. While most of the debate over possible standards has focused on the empirical question of each standard's economic utility, this Article undertakes a somewhat different task: It examines the normative benchmark that courts have actually chosen when adjudicating section 2 cases. This Article explores three possible benchmarks-producer welfare, purchaser welfare, and total welfare-and concludes that courts have opted for a total welfare normative approach to section 2 since the …

Challenges And Opportunities For The Tax Professional Guiding Closely-Held Entities: 2009 & 2010 Regulatory And Judicial Developments Impacting Fourth Circuit Tax Practitioners, Rose L. Bailey

Campbell Law Review

When framing adequate tax advice to protect oneself from preparer penalties under sometimes ambiguous or unsettled tax law, or when trying to affect your best appellate argument or direct a strategic audit litigation path, there can be no doubt of the importance of considering judicial precedent developments in all of these paths. To that end, under the discretion of this Author, a selection of relevant administrative regulations and rulings as well as judicial authority rendered in 2009 through spring 2010 are contained in this Article to cover significant income taxation developments impacting certain closely-held entities. Closely-held entities are considered, for …

The People Versus Corporate Welfare: North Carolina's Forsaken Opportunity To Reverse Perversion Of The Commerce Clause And To Reinvigorate The Public Purpose Doctrine, Jeanette K. Doran

Campbell Law Review

This Article neither espouses judicial intervention in any political controversy nor offers "broad" and "sweeping" constitutional theories. Instead, this Article is calculated to recognize the efforts of taxpayers who have resorted to the very constitutional rights afforded to them as citizens and taxpayers to challenge governmental acts which are repugnant to the very foundations of our society and to encourage the judiciary to fulfill its duty to reject legislation which is contrary to the state or federal constitution. As the North Carolina Supreme Court stated in the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Maxwell case: "The principle of equal …