Securities Law Commons^™

Welcome Address, Lauren Mckenzie

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Wireless Investors & Apathy Obsolescence, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Christina M. Sautter

Faculty Works

This Article discusses how a subgenre of retail investors makes investors’ apathy obsolete. In prior work, we dub retail investors who rely on technology and online communications in their investing and corporate governance endeavors “wireless investors.” By applying game theory, this Article discusses how wireless investors’ global-scale online interactions allow them to circulate information and coordinate, obliterating collective action problems.

The Retail Investor Report, Nick Einhorn, Jill E. Fisch, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Monique Le, Christina M. Sautter

Faculty Works

In 2020, a wave of retail investors entered the stock market. In the last two years, approximately 30 million new retail investors opened brokerage accounts in the U.S. By 2021, retail investors comprised 25% of total equities trading volume, nearly double the percentage reported a decade prior.

And they’ve stuck around. In February 2023, retail investors across platforms set a new all-time high for weekly inflows, with $1.5 billion dollars pouring into the market in a single week.

Participation in the public markets remains high; more significantly, it has evolved. Public.com surveyed 2,000+ investors to compile its 2023 report. Public’s …

Cryptocurrency: Regulate Or Facilitate? How States' Approaches To Cryptocurrency Can Be Applied On A Federal Level, Kelly Mahoney

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

Within the past two years, the cryptocurrency market exceeded a record $2 trillion. As of November 2021, there are seventy-five million Bitcoin (a type of cryptocurrency) users and counting. Many states have implemented regulations and policies in response to this massive growth of the crypto market. While some states like Wyoming and Texas welcome cryptocurrency other states, such as New York and Washington, are more apprehensive and seek to constrain cryptocurrency due to its volatility and novelty. In contrast, federal agencies are still debating on how to address cryptocurrency, and glimpses of federal regulation can be seen through the 2021 …

Regulating Best Interest: Sec Confronts The Brave New Markets, Rayaan Hossain

University of Miami Business Law Review

This Note comments on how recent developments in securities regulation deal with today’s securities industry challenges. As usual, the law advances much slower than technology. After decades of debate over heightened standards for broker-dealers giving investment advice, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) introduced Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI). Our modern market demands that broker-dealers execute quick trades on behalf of their clients as well as provide broader investment advice. The popularity of online trading platforms (“OTPs”) only exacerbated the need for regulatory changes. The theme of this paper surmises how Reg BI responds to the rise of the retail …

Spacs, Forward-Looking Statements, And Rule 419: Is Sec Rulemaking Needed?, Nicholas Vota

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

On October 8, 2020, FirstMark Horizon Acquisition Corp. (“FirstMark” or “Company”) closed an initial public offering (“IPO”) of 41,400,000 units. Each unit was priced at $10.00 and “consist[ed] of one share of Class A common stock of the Company . . . and one-third of one redeemable warrant of the Company.” Each whole warrant provided its holder with the right to purchase “one share of Class A [c]ommon [s]tock for $11.50 per share.” FirstMark generated $414,000,000 in connection with the IPO. These funds were then placed in a trust account and maintained by a trustee.

In a filing submitted …

Session 5: Banking, Capital Markets, And The Crypto Revolution - A Look Back And Projection Of The Future Of Fintech, Joseph R. Cutler, Lawrence Kaplan, Youssef Sneifer, Jill Williamson

SITIE Symposiums

In Session Five of the SITIE 2023 Symposium: Enabling Innovation in Law and Society, Joseph M. Vincent moderated as the four panelists, Joseph R. Cutler, Lawrence Kaplan, Youssef Sneifer, and Jill Williamson, discussed banking, capital markets, and the crypto revolution by looking back and projecting the future of the financial technology (FinTech) industry. The discussion commenced with a conversation on banking deposits, then moved into a discussion on cryptocurrency companies and the challenges they have faced in recent years in the banking industry. The panelists further discussed artificial intelligence (AI) technology’s impact on FinTech, open banking, and challenges facing cryptocurrency …

Session 4: Fireside Virtual Chat With Bruce Jackson, Associate General Counsel, Microsoft, Bruce Jackson

SITIE Symposiums

Rhymes all have in common? Besides musical talent, they have all been represented by Bruce Jackson, one of the founding partners of the entertainment law firm, Jackson, Brown, Powell, and St. George. Jackson, a Brooklynite and longtime Microsoft attorney, is a force in the legal industry. Jackson started at Microsoft in the year 2000 as Corporate Counsel for the digital media division. Jackson now serves as Associate General Counsel and Managing Director for Strategic Partnerships out of the Office of the President for Microsoft. Jackson recently published his first book, Never Far From Home: My Journey from Brooklyn to Hip …

Session 3: Diversity Enhancing Intellectual Property, Jordi Goodman, Nina Srejovic

SITIE Symposiums

The field of intellectual property suffers from a lack of diversity. Women are underrepresented as credited inventors in the United States. Additionally, multi-gender inventor groups are underrepresented compared to all-male and, sometimes, even all-female groups. This representation has changed over time, with changes not always reflecting an increase in female representation. This is particularly true when studying gender-disparity as it exists in the field of computer programming and software patents. While women were well represented in computer programming at field’s inception, this changed after World War II because men lobbied to push women out of the field. Women have since …

Session 2: Diversity As Key To Innovation - Stem Education, Richard Tapia

SITIE Symposiums

Richard A. Tapia is a professor at Rice University, where he has taught since 1970. Tapi specializes in optimization theory and numerical analysis. It has been his lifelong work to help underrepresented minorities achieve academic success and success in life.

In this talk, Tapia emphasizes the importance of diversity in STEM fields and highlights the failures of the education system in supporting underrepresented minorities. Tapia opines that more efforts need to be made to bring domestic underrepresented minorities into STEM positions and to recognize the value they bring. Tapia believes that, to address the lack of minority representation in STEM …

Session 1b: Innovation In Legal Contracts And Deals - How Lexion Is Incorporating Ai Into Document Revision, Lexion

SITIE Symposiums

Here, Gaurav Oberoi (CEO and Founder, Lexion) & Jessica Nguyen (Chief Legal Officer, Lexion) discuss Lexion and how it will change the legal industry. Lexion seeks to revolutionize how companies manage the contracts that they use. It has begun to corner a particular market in the rapidly growing field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), helping in-house attorneys to improve their workflow by automatically analyzing documents. By using AI, the program can successfully remove what the CEO of Lexion refers to as “low value” work. This allows overworked in-house attorneys to not only do more work in a faster time frame, but …

Session 1a: Innovation In The Delivery Of Legal Services And Access To Justice, Vikktoria

SITIE Symposiums

In session one, Walid Romaya and Tabrez Ebrahim, co-founders of Vikktoria, discuss their company and its contributions to improving access to justice. With a dual focus on achieving a broader access to justice and in providing matchmaking services for legal professionals looking for a larger client base, Vikktoria aims to disrupt the legal services industry through its mobile app. Based in California, Vikktoria has begun to expand to various metro areas around the country and hopes to provide broader access to justice by giving those with little to no legal knowledge an easy way to find a local attorney, book …

Introduction, Steven Bender

SITIE Symposiums

No abstract provided.

Corporate Democracy And The Intermediary Voting Dilemma, Jill E. Fisch, Jeff Schwartz

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Corporate governance is changing. For the past two decades, the focus of shareholder voting and engagement was deconstructing impediments to shareholder power and increasing managerial accountability. The goal of these interventions was to increase firm value by reducing agency costs. Increasingly, however, environmental and social issues have risen to the fore. This new focus is arguably more about values than value. This Article is the first to argue that, because of this shift, institutional intermediaries—namely, pension and mutual fund managers—can no longer vote and engage on the affairs of their portfolio companies without seeking the input of the pension-plan participants …

The Market-Essential Role Of Corporate Climate Disclosure, George S. Georgiev

Articles

This Article focuses on capital market efficiency as an often-downplayed legal rationale for mandating corporate climate disclosure, and explores it alongside the notion of investor demand, which has assumed a prominent and, increasingly, contested role in debates on climate disclosure. Because market efficiency (encompassing both securities price accuracy and overall capital market allocative efficiency) is generally unobservable, many commentators have instead emphasized the highly visible investor demand for climate-related disclosure as evidenced by shareholder proposals, voting behavior, stewardship policies, and public statements. Unfortunately, investor demand can be disputed, sometimes fairly but most often unfairly, because investor preferences are heterogeneous, dynamic, …

Sec V. Panuwat: The Federal Pursuit Of Shadow Trading, Kayla Kershen

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

In 2021, the SEC filed a complaint against a biopharmaceutical executive, Matthew Panuwat, for trading on material non-public information in violation of both the federal securities laws and his employer’s company policies. However, because the subject of the confidential information was not his employer, but a similarly situated peer company, Panuwat’s conduct constitutes “shadow trading.” The SEC’s enforcement, and the Northern District of California’s subsequent approval, indicate that company insiders may face liability for shadow trading. However, as written, the SEC arguably bases its attachment of federal liability on the company policies that Panuwat was bound by and violated. This …

Entire Fairness Or Bust: The Burst Of The 2020-2021 Spac Bubble, Nicole Lynch

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) have skyrocketed in recent years as an alternative for taking private companies public through an initial public offering (IPO). SPACs are blank-check companies that raise capital through public exchanges for the “special purpose” of acquiring a privately held company. Once acquired, the private company will take the SPAC’s place on the public exchange, effectively accomplishing the same thing as a traditional IPO but without all the onerous reporting requirements and upfront costs. For these reasons, SPACs have become the next big thing in securities markets despite being around since the 1990s. Throughout 2020 and 2021, …

The Business Of Securities Class Action Lawyering, Stephen J. Choi, Jessica Erickson, Adam C. Pritchard

Law & Economics Working Papers

Plaintiffs’ lawyers in the United States play a key role in combating corporate fraud. Shareholders who lose money as a result of fraud can file securities class actions to recover their losses, but most shareholders do not have enough money at stake to justify overseeing the cases filed on their behalf. As a result, plaintiffs’ lawyers control these cases, deciding which cases to file and how to litigate them. Recognizing the agency costs inherent in this model, the legal system relies on lead plaintiffs and judges to monitor these lawyers and protect the best interests of absent class members. Yet …

Meme Corporate Governance, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, Yoon-Ho Alex Lee

Law & Economics Working Papers

Can retail investors revolutionize corporate governance and make public companies more responsive to social concerns? The U.S. stock market offered an unusual experiment to test the impact of retail investors in 2021, when there was a dramatic influx of retail investors into the shareholder base of companies such as GameStop and AMC. The meme surge phenomenon elicited a variety of reactions from scholars and practitioners. While some worried that affected companies’ share prices were becoming disjointed from their financial fundamentals, others predicted that retail shareholders will reduce the power of large institutional investors and democratize corporate governance. This Article presents …