Business Organizations Law Commons^™

Shareholder Inspection Rights: From Credible Basis To Rational Belief, Lynn Bai

Emory Business Law Review

Jurisdictions are split on the standard of proof for shareholder inspection lawsuits when inspections are for the purpose of investigating managerial misconduct. Delaware and its followers apply a credible basis standard that calls for extrinsic evidence, beyond mere suspicion, curiosity, or disagreement with management, to permit an inference of misconduct. A minority of jurisdictions require shareholders to show merely a rational belief that mismanagement likely happened. Rational belief can be satisfied by sound logic without referencing extrinsic evidence. The Delaware Supreme Court rejected rational belief for fear that a permissive standard would lead to a cascade of frivolous inspections, although …

From Director Liability To Officer Liability To Esg Caremark Claims: A Natural Evolution?, Gareth Mchugh

Emory Business Law Review

With the McDonald’s decision, officers and directors could face Caremark liability for the first time, and this decision could also lead to an influx of ESG-based Caremark claims in Delaware Courts. This Comment explains that, while ESG Caremark claims would force corporations to adopt ESG oversight systems to avoid liability, the very political, social, and legal environment that created a growing call for ESG Caremark claims presents a beneficial opportunity for corporations to appeal to consumers and investors by proactively adopting ESG oversight systems. Corporations are at a nexus where they can either willingly adopt ESG oversight systems and reap …

United We Stand, Divided We Fall: A Survey Of Current Public And Private Initiatives Addressing Board Diversity & A Proposed Sec Diversity Disclosure To Help Increase Board Diversity, Gabrielle Hunter

Emory Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Failure Of Market Efficiency, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have witnessed the near total triumph of market efficiency as a regulatory goal. Policymakers regularly proclaim their devotion to ensuring efficient capital markets. Courts use market efficiency as a guiding light for crafting legal doctrine. And scholars have explored in great depth the mechanisms of market efficiency and the role of law in promoting it. There is strong evidence that, at least on some metrics, our capital markets are indeed more efficient than they have ever been. But the pursuit of efficiency has come at a cost. By focusing our attention narrowly on economic efficiency concerns—such as competition, …

Is "Public Company" Still A Viable Regulatory Category?, George S. Georgiev

Faculty Articles

This Article suggests that the ubiquitous “public company” regulatory category, as currently constructed, has outlived its effectiveness in fulfilling core goals of the modern administrative state. An ever-expanding array of federal economic regulation hinges on public company status, but “public company” differs from most other regulatory categories in that it requires an affirmative opt-in by the subject entity. In practice, firms today become subject to public company regulation only if they need access to the public capital markets, which is much less of a business imperative than it once was due to the proliferation of private financing options. Paradoxically, then, …

101 Lawyers: Attorney Appearances In Twitter V. Musk, Andrew K. Jennings

Faculty Articles

In summer 2022, Twitter sued Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over his refusal to close his agreed-to $44 billion acquisition of the social-media company. Twitter v. Musk had the makings of corporate law’s trial of the century. Leading law firms represented Twitter, Musk, and third parties in a dispute with enormous financial, social, and political implications. In the lead up to trial, however, Musk relented and closed the deal. The corporate trial of the century was a bust, over almost as soon as it began.

But in the meantime, in Twitter’s eighty-six days …

The Public’S Companies, Andrew K. Jennings

Faculty Articles

This Essay uses a series of survey studies to consider how public understandings of public and private companies map into urgent debates over the role of the corporation in American society. Does a social-media company, for example, owe it to its users to follow the free-speech principles embodied in the First Amendment? May corporate managers pursue environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) policies that could reduce short-term or long-term profits? How should companies respond to political pushback against their approaches to free expression or ESG?

The studies’ results are consistent with understandings that both public and private companies have greater public …

The Market For Corporate Criminals, Andrew K. Jennings

Faculty Articles

This Article identifies problems and opportunities at the intersection of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate crime and compliance. In M&A, criminal successor liability is of particular importance, because it is quantitatively less predictable and qualitatively more threatening to buyers than successor liability in tort or contract. Private successor liability requires a buyer to bear bounded economic costs, which can in turn be reallocated to sellers via the contracting process. Criminal successor liability, however, threatens a buyer with non-indemnifiable and potentially ruinous punishment for another firm’s wrongful acts.

This threat may inhibit the marketability of businesses that have criminal exposure, …

Disclosure Procedure, Andrew K. Jennings

Faculty Articles

Securities disclosure is a human process. Each year, public companies collectively spend over fifteen million hours producing disclosures that undergird an equities market with tens of trillions in market capitalization. The procedures they follow in doing so affect whether their disclosures contain misstatements or omissions—errors that can cause trading losses for investors, and litigation for issuers. Yet despite the importance of the disclosures that firms produce, the literature says little about how they do it, including whether they are spending too much, too little, or just enough on their disclosure procedures. To fill that gap, this Article uses original surveys …

Contract Production In M&A Markets, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Matthew Jennejohn, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Contract scholarship has devoted considerable attention to how contract terms are designed to incentivize parties to fulfill their obligations. Less attention has been paid to the production of contracts and the tradeoffs between using boilerplate terms and designing bespoke provisions. In thick markets everyone uses the standard form despite the known drawbacks of boilerplate. But in thinner markets, such as the private deal M&A world, parties trade off costs and benefits of using standard provisions and customizing clauses. This Article reports on a case study of contract production in the M&A markets. We find evidence of an informal information network …

Is Corporate Law Nonpartisan?, Ofer Eldar, Gabriel V. Rauterberg

Faculty Scholarship

Only rarely does the United States Supreme Court hear a case with fundamental implications for corporate law. In Camey v. Adams, however, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to address whether the State of Delaware's requirement of partisan balance for its judiciary violates the First Amendment. Although the Court disposed of the case on other grounds, Justice Sotomayor acknowledged that the issue "will likely be raised again." The stakes are high because most large businesses are incorporated in Delaware and thus are governed by its corporate law. Former Delaware governors and chief justices lined up to defend the state's "nonpartisan" …

Independence Reconceived, Claire Hill, Yaron Nili

Faculty Scholarship

What makes a director independent? Scholars, regulators, and investors have grappled for decades with the fleeting notion of director independence. Originally conceived as guardians of shareholder interests that could safeguard a corporate board’s ability to check management’s power, independent directors have become a marquee feature of modern corporate governance. But do the corporate actions of directors that are considered “independent” under current standards comport with what we think independence requires? In many cases, the answer would seem to be “no.” From a lack of observable financial impact to the unabated flow of corporate scandals, independent directors seem to keep failing …

Misaligned Measures Of Control: Private Equity's Antitrust Loophole, Aslihan Asil, John M. Barrios, Thomas G. Wollmann

Faculty Scholarship

Agencies and legislators have raised concerns that acquisitions backed by private equity (PE) threaten competition, but few, if any, have offered explanations as to why they pose a unique threat. In this article, we argue that many PE-backed acquisitions may avoid antitrust enforcement because they escape detection. Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, parties intending to merge must notify federal authorities and wait for clearance. However, various exemptions exist based on the size of the transaction, parties involved, and proportion of control conferred by the merger. Recent work demonstrates that to police mergers effectively, agencies must be informed about transactions …

Corporate Governance And Risk-Taking: A Statistical Approach, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Because prudent corporate governance often requires managers to take risks based on statistically expected outcomes, corporate failures that have a small but finite chance of occurring cannot always be prevented. This Article makes three related claims about risk-taking in corporate governance.

This Article’s first claim is that managers should not automatically be presumed to be at fault for corporate failures that result from risk-taking decisions based on statistical methodologies that reasonably justify the decisions ex ante. Conceptually, the business judgment rule should protect corporate managers for engaging in a reasonable decision-making process, including one that is statistically based. Jurisdictionally, however, …

To Have Or Have Not: The Limits Of Comply-Or-Explain Governance In An American Exchange, Johnson A. Salisbury Jr.

Emory Law Journal

In 2020, the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (“Nasdaq”) proposed a comply-or-explain governance rule to the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), aimed at increasing diversity in companies listed on its exchange. The resulting listing rule—approved by the SEC in 2021—was met with a mixed chorus of cheers and jeers from the public and regulated companies. Missing from that chorus, however, was an analysis of the effectiveness of Nasdaq’s approach in using a flexible, predominantly international comply-or-explain governance model to regulate the companies listed on its exchange.

Framed as a disclosure code, Nasdaq’s Listing Rule 5605(f)(2) requires listed companies …

Money Creation And Bank Clearing, Nadav Orian Peer

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Like many other countries, the U.S. money supply consists primarily of deposits created by private commercial banks. How we understand bank money creation matters enormously. We are currently witnessing a debate between two competing understandings. On the one hand, a long-standing conventional view argues that bank money creation originates in individual market transactions. Based on this understanding, the conventional view narrowly limits the scope of banking regulation to market failure correction. On the other hand, authors in a new legal literature emphasize the public aspects of bank money creation, characterizing it as a “public franchise,” a “public-private partnership,” and part …

Gamestopped: How Robinhood’S Gamestop Trading Halt Reveals The Complexities Of Retail Investor Protection, Neal F. Newman

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Should brokers have the unfettered right to restrict investor trading? GameStop, a brick-and-mortar video game retailer, had been experiencing declining revenues since 2016. However, GameStop saw its share price climb almost 1000 percent in the span of a one- week period from January 21, 2021 to January 27, 2021 due to retail investors buying significant amounts of GameStop shares during that period. Melvin Capital, a hedge fund, ended up losing billions as they were betting that GameStop shares would lose value instead of increase—a practice referred to as short selling. On January 28, 2021, brokers inexplicably halted trading on GameStop …

The Battle With Big Tech: Analyzing Antitrust Enforcement And Proposed Reforms, Youngjae Lee, Morgan Hagenbuch

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Nicholas Keenan, Senya Merchant, Clara Lane

UC Law Business Journal

No abstract provided.

Don’T Let The Green Grass Fool You: Green Contingent Convertible Bonds And Their Role In The Pursuit Of A Sustainable Economy, Eyolf Aaro

UC Law Business Journal

This paper exposes some prominent issues that arise when banks label their contingent convertible bonds (CoCos) as “green,” and proposes a mechanism to improve green CoCos as climate change mitigation instruments. The green label is weakly protected due to regulatory requirements for capital instruments issued by banks. Current and proposed green bond frameworks, when applied to standard green bonds are insufficient in ensuring real environmental impacts from the bonds, are not prepared for the novelty of labeling CoCos as green. The result is a financial instrument through which issuing banks unsuccessfully try to achieve both regulatory and environmental aims. The …