Monthly Archives: December 2012

Survey of Mutual Fund Support for Corporate Political Disclosure

Bruce F. Freed is president and a founder of the Center for Political Accountability. This post is based on the CPA’s Annual Mutual Fund Survey; the full report is available here.

The Center for Political Accountability released on December 10, 2012 its annual survey of mutual fund support for corporate political disclosure. The analysis, which is available on CPA’s website, reviewed how 40 of the largest mutual fund families voted on shareholder resolutions that asked for disclosure of political spending based on the CPA model.

The review’s key findings include the following:

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Fiduciary Duties as Default Standard Under Limited Liability Company Act

Creighton Condon is senior partner at Shearman & Sterling LLP. This post is based on a Shearman & Sterling client publication. This post is part of the Delaware law series, which is cosponsored by the Forum and Corporation Service Company; links to other posts in the series are available here.

In the recent decision Gatz Properties LLC v. Auriga Capital Corporation, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the Delaware Court of Chancery’s January 2012 decision in Auriga Capital Corporation v. Gatz Properties. In January of this year, the Court of Chancery held that a controlling member and manager of a limited liability company breached his fiduciary duties to the company’s minority members because the process by which he purchased the limited liability company from the minority members did not result in the payment of a fair price under the entire fairness standard of review. In affirming the decision, the Supreme Court stated that the question of whether the default standard under the Delaware Limited Liability Company Act is that a manager owes fiduciary duties to the members of a limited liability company remains unanswered and should not have been addressed by the lower court. Until this question is answered definitively, members of limited liability companies should clearly state in the limited liability company agreement whether and to what extent the company’s managers or controlling persons should have any fiduciary duties to the members.

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Recent Developments in Money Market Funds

Editor’s Note: Luis A. Aguilar is a Commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This post is based on a statement by Commissioner Aguilar available here. The views expressed in the post are those of Commissioner Aguilar and do not necessarily reflect those of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the other Commissioners, or the Staff.

There have been recent developments related to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s consideration of potential reform of money market funds that I would like to highlight.

On November 30, 2012, the SEC staff delivered to the Commission its report delving deeper into the causes of investor redemptions in 2008, the efficacy of the Commission’s 2010 amendments to strengthen Rule 2a-7 (the principal rule that governs money market funds), and the potential impacts of future reform on issuers and investors. This is a welcome development. As I previously stated, I have been requesting this analysis so that it could inform the dialogue as to any further money market fund reform. [1] The staff’s report is a response to a request made in mid-September by a majority of the Commission (Commissioners Aguilar, Paredes and Gallagher) that asked the Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation to conduct a study to answer a series of questions intended to inform the continuing dialogue.

I look forward to the staff’s report being made public, so that the Commission can benefit from the public dialogue.

There have also been developments in the consideration of the potential impact of assets migrating from existing transparent, regulated money market funds to opaque, unregulated funds (sometimes referred to as Liquidity Funds) as a result of structural changes to money market funds.

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SEC Investigations and Securities Class Actions: An Empirical Comparison

The following post comes to us from Stephen J. Choi, Murray and Kathleen Bring Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and Adam C. Pritchard, Professor of Law at University of Michigan.

In our paper, SEC Investigations and Securities Class Actions: An Empirical Comparison, we compare investigations by the SEC with securities fraud class action filings involving public companies. Critics of securities class actions commonly contrast those suits with enforcement actions brought by the SEC. According to those critics, the SEC is superior to plaintiffs’ lawyers both in targeting defendants and securing sanctions against them. With respect to targeting, critics of securities class actions claim that the settlement dynamics of class actions encourage plaintiffs’ lawyers to bring a high proportion of non-meritorious suits. If companies must pay substantial costs when they are unjustifiably targeted, the deterrent value of class actions is diluted. With regard to sanctions, class action settlements are almost always paid by the company and its directors’ & officers (D&O) insurance; the corporate officers responsible for the fraud rarely contribute. By contrast, SEC enforcement actions commonly lead to payments from the responsible officers; the SEC also has the authority to bar individuals from serving as directors and officers of public companies, a career death sentence for the individual subjected to a bar. Critics of class actions argue that the combination of more precise targeting of suits and more individual sanctions yields a stronger deterrent punch for SEC enforcement relative to class actions.

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Corporate Short-Termism in the Fiscal Cliff’s Shadow

Editor’s Note: Mark Roe is the David Berg Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches bankruptcy and corporate law. This post is Professor Roe’s most recent op-ed written for the international association of newspapers Project Syndicate, which can be found here.

Economic trends are sometimes more closely related to one another than news reports make them seem. For example, one regularly encounters reports of governments’ financial troubles, like the “fiscal cliff” in the United States and the debt crisis in Europe. And much attention has been devoted, often in nearby opinion pieces, to the view that hyperactive equities markets, particularly in the US and the United Kingdom, push large corporations to focus disproportionately on short-term financial results at the expense of long-term investments in their countries’ economies.

The two are not unconnected. And examining that connection provides a good opportunity to assess the weaknesses and ambiguities of the longstanding argument that a furiously high-volume stock-market trading shortens corporate time horizons.

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Corporate Governance at Silicon Valley Companies 2012

The following post comes to us from David A. Bell, partner in the corporate and securities group at Fenwick & West LLP. This post is based on portions of a Fenwick publication, titled Corporate Governance Practices and Trends: A Comparison of Large Public Companies and Silicon Valley Companies (2012); the complete survey is available here.

Since 2003, Fenwick has collected a unique body of information on the corporate governance practices of publicly traded companies that is useful for all Silicon Valley companies and publicly-traded technology and life science companies across the U.S. as well as public companies and their advisors generally. Fenwick’s annual survey covers a variety of corporate governance practices and data for the companies included in the Standard & Poor’s 100 Index (S&P 100) and the high technology and life science companies included in the Silicon Valley 150 Index (SV 150). [1] In this report, we present statistical information for a subset of the data we have collected over the years. These include:

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December 2012 Dodd-Frank Progress Report

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 December 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 December 3, 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.
  • Although no rulemaking requirements were met in November, there was a flurry of regulatory activity in the form of no-action relief and other guidance, particularly by the CFTC with regards to Title VII implementation.

Towards a Legal Theory of Finance

The following post comes to us from Katharina Pistor, Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia University School of Law.

The paper, Towards a Legal Theory of Finance, develops the building blocks for a legal theory of finance (LTF). By placing law at the center of the analysis of financial systems LTF sheds light on the construction of financial markets, their interconnectedness and thus vulnerability to crisis, and situates power where law is elastic or suspended in the name of financial stability. LTF has four elements: It holds that modern financial markets are (1) rule-bound systems; (2) essentially hybrid; (3) beset by the law-finance paradox; (4) and in the last instance subject to discretionary rather than rule-bound actions.

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Don’t Ask, Don’t Waive Standstills

William Savitt is a partner in the Litigation Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton firm memorandum by Mr. Savitt, Trevor S. Norwitz, and Igor Kirman.

A recent transcript ruling in the Delaware Court of Chancery could have a significant impact on the market for control of public companies, particularly in an auction context, if broadly adopted.

Vice Chancellor Laster’s bench decision in In Re Complete Genomics, Inc. Shareholder Litigation questions the enforceability of a standstill agreement that prohibits the bidder from privately requesting a waiver to make a topping bid, which he labeled a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Waive” standstill. The Vice Chancellor did not object to the bidder being prohibited from publicly requesting a waiver (which he understood would clearly circumvent the standstill), but held that directors have a continuing duty to be informed of all material facts, including whether the rejected bidder is willing to offer a higher price. By analogy to cases holding that a board that has agreed to sell the company may not close its ears to the possibility of higher bids, he suggested that “a Don’t Ask, Don’t Waive Standstill is impermissible because it has the same disabling effect as the no-talk clause, although on a bidder-specific basis.” While this may seem favorable for bidders, it raises questions about the protections afforded by typical standstill arrangements and the willingness of targets to engage in transaction discussions if they have doubts about those protections. The ruling also raises questions about its potential extension to standstill agreements in joint ventures and other commercial contexts, which could undermine the value of contractually bargained-for protections.

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Voluntary Disclosure on Corporate Political Spending Is Not Enough

Lucian Bebchuk is Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance at Harvard Law School. Robert J. Jackson, Jr. is Associate Professor of Law and Milton Handler Fellow at Columbia Law School. Bebchuk and Jackson served as co-chairs of the Committee on Disclosure of Corporate Political Spending, which filed a rulemaking petition concerning political spending, discussed on the Forum here and here. Posts discussing their articles on corporate political spending, Corporate Political Speech: Who Decides?, and Shining Light on Corporate Political Spending, are available here.

In an article published today by New York Times DealBook, as part of Lucian Bebchuk’s column series, we focus on the expected SEC consideration of the rulemaking petition urging adoption of rules that would require public companies to disclose information about their political spending.

Opponents of mandatory disclosure rules can be expected to claim that the recent willingness of some large public companies to voluntarily disclose information about their political spending makes it unnecessary for the SEC to adopt such rules. This area can be left to private ordering, it might be argued, allowing each company to choose the level and type of disclosure that best suits its needs. We explain why the SEC should not accept such claims.

The decisions by some large public companies to begin disclosing voluntarily information about their political spending is a positive development. But the emergence of voluntary disclosure practices, we show, does not obviate the need for mandatory rules in this area. Requiring disclosure on corporate political spending is needed to ensure that all public companies provide clear, consistent information that enables investors to know whether, and how, their money is being spent on politics.

The column, titled “Voluntary Disclosure on Corporate Political Spending Is Not Enough,” is available here.

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