Monthly Archives: November 2012

Conflicts of Interest: Requiring a Closer Governance Focus

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Saturday, November 24, 2012
, ,
More from: ,

The following post comes to us from Michael W. Peregrine, partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP. This post is based on an article by Mr. Peregrine.

A series of broad based developments over the last year combine to encourage governing boards to apply closer attention to conflicts of interest issues. These developments include several prominent judicial decisions; a series of focused articles in The New York Times; a highly public state attorney general investigation; the SEC internal investigation of its general counsel — and the subsequent investigation of its own Inspector General. Collectively, they draw new attention to the proper identification, disclosure and resolution of potential conflicts of interest. This new attention is consistent with an increasing lack of public, judicial and regulatory tolerance for perceived ethical lapses by corporate fiduciaries, their advisors, and others in a position of trust and confidence.

READ MORE »

Key Year-End Considerations for Public Companies

Posted by John F. Olson, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Georgetown Law Center, on
Friday, November 23, 2012
, ,
More from: , , , , ,

John Olson is a founding partner of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, D.C. office and a visiting professor at the Georgetown Law Center. This post is based on a Gibson Dunn alert by Amy Goodman, Elizabeth A. Ising, Gillian McPhee and Ronald O. Mueller.

With the arrival of fall, calendar-year companies are gearing up for what promises to be another busy proxy season, preparing for new rules that will impact their disclosures and governance practices, and planning their 2013 board and committee calendars. To assist public companies in these endeavors, we discuss below ten key items for corporate secretaries and in-house counsel to consider.

READ MORE »

It’s (Not) All About the Money

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Friday, November 23, 2012
, , , , ,
More from:

The following post comes to us from Nizan Geslevich Packin at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

In the paper, It’s (Not) All About the Money: Using Behavioral Economics to Improve Regulation of Risk Management in Financial Institutions, forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, I focus on the Dodd-Frank Act’s risk management provisions, and specifically the requirement that financial institutions create separate risk committees. The goal of this regulation is to mitigate risks to the financial stability of the US, because despite media attention to financial institutions and great regulatory efforts, including the focus on risk management, little has changed in financial institutions’ business cultures. Indeed, excessive risk-taking by such institutions is still rampant. In the article, I argue that risk-related decision makers do not make decisions about risk-taking in a vacuum, but in an environment where multiple factors, noticed and unnoticed, can influence the decisions. Such factors include cognitive-related biases and group-related biases, and there are tools, which have not yet been analyzed in literature that regulators can use to reduce undesired or excessive risk-taking. Indeed, by shaping such environmental factors in which risk-related decisions in financial institutions are made, regulation can help actors make better, less pro-risk-taking, choices. With the goal of reducing excessive risk-taking by financial institutions, this article builds on an emerging focus in behavioral law and economics on prospects for “debiasing” actors through the structure of legal rules. Under this approach, legal policy may reduce biases’ effects and judgment errors by directly addressing them. Doing so will then help the relevant actors either to reduce or to eliminate these effects and errors. Accordingly, the article suggests using behavioral economic-based legal guidelines to supplement the Dodd-Frank Act‘s risk committee’s requirement. Such legal guidelines would help reduce the degree of biased behavior that risk committees exhibit.

READ MORE »

Oral Argument in Amgen: Will it Sway the Court?

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, November 22, 2012
, , ,
More from: , , , ,

The following post comes to us from Paul A. Ferrillo, litigation counsel at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. This post is based on an article by Mr. Ferrillo, Robert F. Carangelo, David Schwartz and Matt Altemeier that first appeared in D&O Diary.

On November 5, 2012, the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument in Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans & Trust Funds (No. 11-1085) (“Amgen”). In Amgen, Plaintiff/Respondent Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds (“Connecticut Retirement”) brought a putative class action under the Exchange Act of 1934, alleging that Defendant/Petitioner Amgen and several of its directors and officers misstated and failed to disclose safety information concerning two of its drugs. Amgen contends that it did not mislead investors and that the information it allegedly concealed was widely known.

Background of Amgen and Path to the Supreme Court

The issue in Amgen is the predominance requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (“Rule”) 23(b)(3), which states that a court may not certify a class for trial without determining that “questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.” Because of the near-impossibility of establishing commonality of direct reliance on alleged misstatements in securities fraud litigations, plaintiffs typically rely on a rebuttable presumption of common indirect reliance on the integrity of the market price for the securities at issue. The Supreme Court first recognized this presumption in Basic Inc. v. Levinson, 485 U.S. 224, 241-47 (1988), relying in part on the “fraud-on-the-market” (“FOTM”) theory. The FOTM theory assumes that the market price of securities traded in an efficient market reflects all publicly-available material information, including any material misrepresentations.

READ MORE »

Limits of Disclosure

Posted by Steven Davidoff, Ohio State University College of Law, on
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
, , ,
More from:

Steven M. Davidoff is an Associate Professor of Law and Finance at Ohio State University College of Law.

In Limits of Disclosure recently posted to the SSRN we examine the shortcomings of disclosure. Claire Hill and I do so by exploring two areas where disclosure arguably failed, albeit for very different reasons: synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), such as Abacus and Timberwolf, sold in the years immediately leading up to the financial crisis, and executive compensation.

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; some have noted that disclosures were sometimes false or incomplete. What follows, 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 do not understand or even read disclosure. This leads, naturally and unsurprisingly, to prescriptions for yet more disclosure, simpler disclosure, and financial literacy education.

READ MORE »

Best Practices for Preparing a Clawback Agreement

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
, ,
More from: , ,

The following post comes to us from Scott J. Davis, head of the US Mergers and Acquisitions group at Mayer Brown LLP, and Michael E. Lackey, Partner-in-Charge of Mayer Brown’s Washington, D.C. office. This post is based on a Mayer Brown memorandum.

Scenario

A large corporation is sued over the alleged breach of a substantial contract. Due to the complex nature of the contract, the corporation’s business executives frequently sought advice from in-house counsel when entering into, and performing under, the agreement. The corporation’s in-house counsel has concerns that sensitive documents reflecting attorney-client communications—or even in-house counsel’s own work product—may be produced by mistake, given the volume of email and electronic documents that must be reviewed quickly.

Clawback Provisions Provide Protections and Cost Savings

Even when a party to a litigation employs precautions to prevent the inadvertent disclosure of privileged documents, some privileged materials are likely to slip through. Recognizing this likelihood, litigants commonly enter into “clawback agreements” at the start of discovery. Typically, a clawback agreement permits either party to demand the return of (that is, to “claw back”) mistakenly produced attorney-client privileged documents or protected attorney work product without waiving any privilege or protection over those materials.

Clawback agreements allow parties to specifically tailor their obligations (if any) to review and separate privileged or protected materials in a manner that suits their needs. For example, before discovery begins, the parties can agree on how they will search for and separate privileged or protected materials from their document productions. So long as the parties abide by the agreement, they will be permitted to take back any privileged or protected material inadvertently produced. Thus, parties can reduce their exposure to costly and time-consuming discovery disputes over whether the protection of privileged material was waived by its production.

READ MORE »

CEO Employment Contracts and Non-compete Covenants

Posted by Randall S. Thomas, Vanderbilt University, on
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
, ,
More from:

Randall S. Thomas is a John Beasley II Professor of Law and Business at Vanderbilt Law School.

In our recent working paper, When Do CEOs Have Covenants Not to Compete in Their Employment Contracts?, we undertake the first comprehensive study of contractual restrictions on CEOs’ post-employment competitive activities. The large random sample of nearly 1,000 CEO employment contracts for 500 companies was selected from the S&P 1500 from the 1990s through 2010. We find that about 70% of CEO contracts have post-employment competitive restrictions. We also find more covenants not to compete (CNCs or noncompetes) in longer-term employment contracts and at profitable firms. In addition, our study uses a nuanced state-by-state CNC strength of enforcement index to test the variance of CEO noncompetes across jurisdictions.

READ MORE »

Recent Trends in US Securities Class Actions against Non-US Companies

Posted by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance & Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
, , ,
More from: , ,
Editor’s Note: Elaine Buckberg is Senior Vice President at NERA Economic Consulting. This post is based on a NERA publication by Robert Patton; the full publication, including footnotes, is available here.

The volume of US securities class action litigation targeting companies outside the US has recently reached record levels, despite a 2010 decision by the US Supreme Court, in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, which substantially restricted the extraterritorial reach of many such cases. This increase is attributable in large part to a wave of suits filed against Chinese companies listed on US stock markets. Even excluding Chinesecompany litigation, however, the pace of US securities class actions against non-US companies has not fallen below the levels observed prior to the Morrison decision.

On the other hand, Morrison may have had some effect on settlement sizes. In the past several years, there have been few very large settlements in US securities class actions against non-US companies, a development that, as discussed below, may be attributable in part to the decision. This article surveys recent trends in filings of US securities class actions against non-US company defendants, drawing upon data up to mid-2012. It also discusses trends in settlements, and concludes by reviewing the outlook for such litigation going forward.

READ MORE »

November 2012 Dodd-Frank Progress Report

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, November 19, 2012
, ,
More from: , ,

The following post comes to us from Margaret E. Tahyar and Gabriel D. Rosenberg of the Financial Institutions Group at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. This post discusses a Davis Polk report, which is available here. A post about the previous progress report is available here. Other posts about the Dodd-Frank Act are available here.

This posting, the November 2012 Davis Polk Dodd-Frank Progress Report, is one in a series of Davis Polk presentations that illustrate graphically the progress of the rulemaking work that has been done and is yet to occur under the Dodd-Frank Act. The Progress Report has been prepared using data from the Davis Polk Regulatory Tracker™, an online subscription service offered by Davis Polk to help market participants understand the Dodd-Frank Act and follow regulatory developments on a real-time basis.

In this report:

  • As of November 1, 2012, a total of 237 Dodd-Frank rulemaking requirement deadlines have passed. Of these 237 passed deadlines, 144 (61%) have been missed and 93 (39%) have been met with finalized rules.
  • In addition, 133 (33.4%) of the 398 total required rulemakings have been finalized, while 132 (33.2%) rulemaking requirements have not yet been proposed.
  • Major rulemaking activity this month included the Federal Reserve, FDIC and OCC final rules on stress testing. Additionally, the SEC proposed a rule on capital, margin and segregation requirements for swap dealers and major swap participants.

Questioning ‘Law and Finance’: US Stock Market Development, 1930-70

Posted by Brian R. Cheffins, University of Cambridge, on
Monday, November 19, 2012
, ,
More from:

Brian Cheffins is a Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Cambridge.

Since the late 1990s, a “law and finance” literature emphasizing quantitative comparative research on the relationship between national legal institutions on the one hand and corporate governance and financial systems on the other has achieved academic prominence. An important tenet of the law and finance literature is that corporate law “matters” in the sense it does much to explain how durable and robust equities markets develop. While “law and finance” has an important forward-looking normative message, namely that countries must enact suitable laws to reach their full economic potential, the thesis that corporate law influences stock market development seems to be well-suited to offer insights into if, when and how a country develops a corporate economy widely held companies dominate. Law and finance thinking implies that this should not occur in the absence of corporate law providing significant stockholder protection. In Questioning “Law and Finance”: U.S. Stock Market Development, 1930-70, recently published on SSRN, we draw upon events occurring in the United States to cast doubt on this logic.

READ MORE »

Page 2 of 6
1 2 3 4 5 6