The Future Of Shareholder Democracy In The Shadow Of The Financial Crisis,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
The Future Of Shareholder Democracy In The Shadow Of The Financial Crisis, Alan Dignam
Seattle University Law Review
This Article argues that the U.K. regulatory response to the financial crisis, in the form of “stewardship” and shareholder engagement, is an error built on a misunderstanding of the key active role shareholders played in the enormous corporate governance failure represented by the banking crisis. Shareholders’ passivity, rather than activity, has characterized the reform perception of the shareholder role in corporate governance. This characterization led to the conclusion that if only they were more active they would be more responsible “stewards” of the corporation. If, as this Article argues, shareholder activity was part of the problem in the banks, then …
Limits Of Disclosure,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill
Seattle University Law Review
One big focus of attention, criticism, and proposals for reform in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has been securities disclosure. Many commentators have emphasized the complexity of the securities being sold, arguing that no one could understand the disclosure. Some observers have noted that disclosures were sometimes false or incomplete. What follows these issues, to some commentators, is that, whatever other lessons we may learn from the crisis, we need to improve disclosure. How should it be improved? Commentators often lament the frailties of human understanding, notably including those of everyday retail investors—people who do not understand or …
The Market For Corporate Control: New Insights From The Financial Crisis In Ireland,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
The Market For Corporate Control: New Insights From The Financial Crisis In Ireland, Blanaid Clarke
Seattle University Law Review
In an ever-changing legal and economic environment, it is incumbent on us to subject all such premises to scrutiny in order to consider their continued application. This Article considers the effect of the MCC on the management of Irish credit institutions in the run-up to the financial crisis. Part II sets the background by explaining how the MCC has become an integral part of takeover regulation in Europe. The weaknesses in the efficient market hypothesis, which underlie the MCC and are summarized in Part III, appear not to have undermined the theory’s credibility in the minds of public policy makers …
Banking And Competition In Exceptional Times,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
Banking And Competition In Exceptional Times, Brett Christophers
Seattle University Law Review
This Article has two main aims: to provide a critical consideration of this contemporary antitrust “revival” from an explicitly political–economic perspective and to point toward some theoretical resources that might facilitate such an assessment.Part II looks backward at the evolution and application of competition law in the banking sector over the relatively longue durée. In this Part, I invoke the concept of “exception” to understand how antitrust policy has developed, and my chief interlocutors are the perhaps unlikely figures of Giorgio Agamben and Karl Marx. Part III looks forward and considers the central question around which the recent resurgence of …
Conceptions Of Corporate Purpose In Post-Crisis Financial Firms,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
Conceptions Of Corporate Purpose In Post-Crisis Financial Firms, Christopher M. Bruner
Seattle University Law Review
American “populism” has had a major impact on the development of U.S. corporate governance throughout its history. Specifically, appeals to the perceived interests of average working people have exerted enormous social and political influence over prevailing conceptions of corporate purpose—that is, the aims toward which society expects corporate decision-making to be directed. In this Article, I assess the impact of American populism upon prevailing conceptions of corporate purpose, contrasting its unique expression in the context of financial firms with that arising in other contexts. I then examine its impact upon corporate governance reforms enacted in the wake of the financial …
Shareholders And Social Welfare,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
Shareholders And Social Welfare, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Seattle University Law Review
This Article addresses the questions of whether and how shareholders matter for social welfare, finding that different and contrasting answers have prevailed during different periods of recent history. Observers in the mid-twentieth century believed that the socioeconomic characteristics of real-world shareholders were highly pertinent to social welfare inquiries. But those observers went on to conclude that there followed no justification for catering to shareholder interest, for shareholders occupied elite social strata. The answer changed during the twentieth century’s closing decades, when observers came to accord the shareholder interest a key structural role in the enhancement of economic efficiency even as …
Central Bank-Led Capitalism?,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
Central Bank-Led Capitalism?, Andrew Bowman Et Al.
Seattle University Law Review
Since the first acute episode of financial crisis in autumn 2008, the world has manifestly changed in dramatic ways that reinforce skepticism and challenge the old assumptions of political economy. Hence this Article about central banks, whose pivotal role in post-crisis capitalism has not been adequately politically or theoretically addressed in any existing literature and can now be opened up by a conjunctural analysis that recognises uncertainty and mutability. There are several reasons why this is an intellectually and politically interesting task. Central banks have become an object of controversy and public attention after being pivotally involved in crisis management, …
Making Money: Leverage And Private Sector Money Creation,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
Making Money: Leverage And Private Sector Money Creation, Margaret M. Blair
Seattle University Law Review
Contrary to the beliefs of most macroeconomists, the financial sector in the United States has grown too large in the last few decades as a consequence of financial innovation that has encouraged the use of too much “leverage” (financing with debt) by financial institutions (as well as by consumers and other borrowers). In Part II, I connect the dots between excessive leverage, risk, and financial market volatility. In Part III, I explore the role that the “shadow-banking sector” has had in driving leverage. In Part IV, I explain why leverage at the level of financial institutions matters for the macroeconomy. …
The Governance And Disclosure Of The Firm As An Enterprise Entity,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
The Governance And Disclosure Of The Firm As An Enterprise Entity, Yuri Biondi
Seattle University Law Review
During recent decades, the rapid pace of financial markets involving new modes of management, governance, and regulation has framed business firms. This corporate drift toward financialization is summarized under the “shareholder value” label. What do financial markets do? Unequivocally, they organize trading on shares that are securities: tradable financial entitlements established by law, which formalize expectations, and claims of financial rents paid by the issuing company. Actually, how continued quotation on share exchanges came to be the barometer of economic or social welfare is a different matter. The latter adoption has required quite a great leap from “the euthanasia of …
Rationales And Designs To Implement An Institutional Big Bang In The Governance Of Global Finance,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
Rationales And Designs To Implement An Institutional Big Bang In The Governance Of Global Finance, Emilios Avgouleas
Seattle University Law Review
The colossal challenges facing international finance pertain to both its governance system and its dual utility and speculative functions, which have become ever more intertwined with the advent of financial innovation. In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), a number of significant reforms are under way to address the second issue, including additional capital and liquidity requirements for banks, measures to battle interconnectedness in the financial sector, new resolution regimes that would allow banks to fail more easily, and stricter frameworks for bank supervision and monitoring of systemic risk. Yet limited progress has been made with respect to …
Framing Address: A Framework For Analyzing Financial Market Transformation,
2013
Seattle University School of Law
Framing Address: A Framework For Analyzing Financial Market Transformation, Steven L. Schwarcz
Seattle University Law Review
The title of this Symposium originally was “Rethinking Financial and Securities Markets.” It is, of course, somewhat presumptuous for scholars to try to rethink financial markets per se. Markets, including financial markets, are driven primarily by supply and demand. But scholars can and should try to influence the future of financial markets by rethinking their fundamental aspects. This Symposium presents work from leading scholars in the fields of law, economics, finance, and accounting. I will try to frame the discussion from the perspectives of these four disciplines. First, however, we need to identify what it is about financial markets that …
The Modern Corporation Magnified: Managerial Accountability In Financial Services Holding Companies,
2013
Chicago-Kent College of Law
The Modern Corporation Magnified: Managerial Accountability In Financial Services Holding Companies, Anita Krug
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article first recalls the primary contours of Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’s acclaimed observations regarding the separation of ownership and control in the “modern corporation,” as well as their conclusions about the implications of those observations for the doctrine of shareholder primacy. Second, the Article describes how the activities of FSHCs generally differ from what we think corporations do and, certainly, from what Berle and Means conceived of as the purpose of corporations or, indeed, any business enterprise. Third, this Article articulates how those business activities render more acute the problem of the separation of ownership and control that …
Inequities In Corporate And Securities Law: Disabling The Exploitative Chinese Corporation And Charting A Path To International Commercial Accountability,
2013
University of San Diego
Inequities In Corporate And Securities Law: Disabling The Exploitative Chinese Corporation And Charting A Path To International Commercial Accountability, Jonathan P. Schmidt
San Diego International Law Journal
This article seeks to illuminate these issues and provide a roadmap for the U.S. federal and state legislatures to come together to protect the U.S. investor from the type of accounting fraud and stock misinformation that was the impetus behind enacting the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. First, this article will discuss the legal backdrop and legislative policy behind U.S. laws such as SOX and its enforcement mechanisms, and the ability for shareholders to bring securities class action derivative actions for financial fraud. This article will also discuss trade secrets laws, criminal extradition treaties, international enforcement of judgments, and elucidate the …
Revolution In Manipulation Law: The New Cftc Rules And The Urgent Need For Economic And Empirical Analyses,
2013
University of Michigan Law School
Revolution In Manipulation Law: The New Cftc Rules And The Urgent Need For Economic And Empirical Analyses, Rosa M. Abrantes-Metz, Gabriel V. Rauterberg, Andrew Verstein
Articles
Three major banks have now admitted that their employees manipulated worldwide interest rates through the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), the most widely used interest rate index. Libor is the interest rate term for trillions of dollars of swaps and loans, and its manipulation may have been used to extract billions of dollars. These allegations come just as commodities manipulation law has been dramatically reformed and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) given vast new regulatory powers. This Article provides the first extended, scholarly analysis of the CFTC’s new anti-manipulation rules. We consider the difficulty the rules address: Commodities manipulation …
Methods For Multicountry Studies Of Corporate Governance (And Evidence From The Brikt Countries),
2013
Northwestern University
Methods For Multicountry Studies Of Corporate Governance (And Evidence From The Brikt Countries), Bernard S. Black, Antonio Gledson De Carvalho, Vikramaditya Khanna, Woochan Kim, B. Burcin Yurtoglu
Law & Economics Working Papers
We discuss the perils in multicountry studies of corporate governance (CG), focusing on emerging markets. The existing studies are massively multicountry studies, which cover many firms across many countries, but rely on the same limited governance elements in each countries, have few firm-level control variables, and use pure-cross-sectional data. This paper discusses the severe data and construct validity issues in these studies, proposes methods to respond to those issues, and applies those methods through a study of five major emerging markets (Brazil, India, Korea, Russia, and Turkey). We develop unique time-series datasets on governance in each country. We address construct …
Congressional Silence And The Statutory Interpretation Game,
2013
William & Mary Law School
Congressional Silence And The Statutory Interpretation Game, Paul Stancil
William & Mary Law Review
This Article explores the circumstances under which the federal legislative apparatus may be unable to respond to a politically objectionable statutory interpretation from the Supreme Court. The Article builds upon existing economic models of statutory interpretation, incorporating transaction costs into the analysis for the first time. The Article concludes by identifying recent real-world disputes in which transaction costs likely constrained Congress and the President from overriding the Court.
Growing Inequality And Racial Economic Gaps,
2013
Texas A&M University School of Law
Growing Inequality And Racial Economic Gaps, Thomas W. Mitchell
Faculty Scholarship
Over the past several decades, economic inequality has grown dramatically in the United States while inter-generational economic mobility has declined, which has challenged the very notion of the "American Dream." In fact, the United States is more economically unequal than most other industrialized countries. Further, there are dramatic and growing racial economic gaps in this country. Despite the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and the various spinoffs it has catalyzed, there has not been any sustained, widespread social movement to address economic inequality in the United States over the course of the past several decades. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a …
Reassessing Apec's Role As A Trans-Regional Economic Architecture: Legal And Policy Dimensions,
2013
Singapore Management University
Reassessing Apec's Role As A Trans-Regional Economic Architecture: Legal And Policy Dimensions, Pasha L. Hsieh
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
This article examines the two-decade evolution of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the future prospects for Asian regionalism. It argues that while APEC retains advantages over competing regional structures, it should undergo reforms to accelerate the Bogor Goals and ensure its complementarity with the World Trade Organization (WTO). The article first analyzes the impact of stake-holding countries’ trade policies on APEC’s structure and development. By assessing APEC’s soft-law mechanism, it explores APEC’s WTO-plus contributions that reinvigorated the International Technology Agreement negotiations and improved supply chain facilitation. APEC’s goal of creating a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) can …
Was The Congressional Grant Of 'Bailout' Authority To Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Really So "Unprecedented?": A Historical Analysis And Comparison Of Treasury Secretary Authority During Financial Crisis,
2013
Pepperdine University
Was The Congressional Grant Of 'Bailout' Authority To Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Really So "Unprecedented?": A Historical Analysis And Comparison Of Treasury Secretary Authority During Financial Crisis, Zachary Cormier
The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law
No abstract provided.
Bargaining Over Loyalty,
2013
University of Michigan Law School
Bargaining Over Loyalty, Daniel A. Crane
Law & Economics Working Papers
Contracts between suppliers and customers frequently contain provisions rewarding the customer for exhibiting loyalty to the seller. For example, suppliers may offer customers preferential pricing for buying a specified percentage of their requirements from the supplier or buying minimum numbers of products across multiple product lines. Such loyalty-inducing contracts have come under attack on antitrust grounds because of their potential to foreclose competitors or soften competition by enabling tacit collusion among suppliers. This article defends loyalty inducement as a commercial practice. Although it can be anticompetitive under some circumstances, rewarding loyal customers is usually procompetitive and price- reducing. The two …
