Yearly Archives: 2013

2012 Year-End Update on Corporate Deferred Prosecution and Non-Prosecution Agreements

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Friday, January 18, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Joseph Warin, partner and chair of the litigation department at the Washington D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and is based on a Gibson Dunn client alert by Mr. Warin and Jeremy Joseph. The full publication, including footnotes and appendix, is available here.

“Over the last decade, DPAs [Deferred Prosecution Agreements] have become a mainstay of white collar criminal law enforcement,” Lanny Breuer, the head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, declared on September 13, 2012. Corporate Deferred Prosecution Agreements (“DPAs”) and Non-Prosecution Agreements (“NPAs”) (collectively, “agreements”) have, in Mr. Breuer’s words, ameliorated the “stark choice” that prosecutors faced: either to employ “the blunt instrument of criminal indictment” that he likened to using “a sledgehammer to crack a nut” or to “walk away” and decline prosecution outright. Mr. Breuer declared that DPAs and NPAs “have had a truly transformative effect on . . . corporate culture across the globe” resulting in “unequivocally[] far greater accountability for corporate wrongdoing–and a sea change in corporate compliance efforts.” Mr. Breuer’s comments are timely, coming in a year during which such agreements yielded a record level of monetary penalties and related payments totaling nearly $9.0 billion and are increasingly used to resolve front-page criminal matters.

This client alert, the ninth in our series of biannual updates on DPAs and NPAs, (1) summarizes the DPAs and NPAs from 2012, (2) considers detailed remarks from leading enforcement officials with the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) regarding settlement agreements, (3) examines compliance measures presented in recent non-FCPA agreements as examples of DOJ-endorsed good practices in various industries, and (4) looks across the Atlantic to evaluate the United Kingdom’s prospective use of DPAs.

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Dodd-Frank Implementation: Navigating the Road Ahead

Posted by Dwight C. Smith, Morrison & Foerster LLP, on
Friday, January 18, 2013
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Dwight C. Smith is a partner at Morrison & Foerster LLP focusing on bank regulatory matters. This post is based on the introduction of a Morrison & Foerster booklet edited by Mr. Smith, Charles Horn, and Anna Pinedo; the full publication is available here.

In 2013, banking organizations, securities firms, insurance companies, and other participants in the financial services industry should stop to consider how the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act has unfolded and to plan for new compliance duties that will or are likely to take effect. Regulators likewise would be advised to take a step back themselves and consider how implementation has proceeded. The incoming 113th Congress will certainly debate possible changes to Dodd-Frank, although the prospects for substantive follow-up legislation, corrective or otherwise, are uncertain at best.

This booklet broadly reviews the critical developments under Dodd-Frank that occurred during the second half of 2012 and considers how and what events may occur, as well as what trends may emerge in 2013. This is not an exhaustive review of all of the Dodd-Frank issues, but we have tried to identify those issues with important consequences for the financial services industry.

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The Effect of Disclosure on the Pay-Performance Relation

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Friday, January 18, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Gus DeFranco and Ole-Kristian Hope, both of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and Stephannie Larocque of the Department of Accounting at the Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame.

An important task for boards is to oversee executive compensation. The effectiveness of boards in carrying out this monitoring responsibility, however, is widely debated. In the paper, The Effect of Disclosure on the Pay-Performance Relation, forthcoming in the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, we argue that disclosure improves board effectiveness. First and as a general point, disclosure can improve transparency, which facilitates the monitoring of management and hence causes managers to act more in the interests of shareholders. Such monitoring is potentially valuable since managers will not always act in the best interest of shareholders.

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How to Address ISS & Glass Lewis Policy Changes

Posted by Holly Gregory, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, on
Thursday, January 17, 2013
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Holly J. Gregory is a corporate partner specializing in corporate governance at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. This post is based on a Weil alert by Ms. Gregory and Rebecca Grapsas; the full document, including footnotes and appendix, is available here.

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) and Glass Lewis & Co. have each made several important revisions to their proxy voting policies for the 2013 proxy season. ISS released new and updated FAQs relating to application of ISS proxy voting policies to compensation (including peer groups and realizable pay), board responsiveness to shareholder proposals, hedging and pledging of company stock, and other matters. This post provides guidance to US companies on how to address these policy changes.

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Characteristics of FDIC Lawsuits against Directors and Officers

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, January 17, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Katie Galley, senior vice president at Cornerstone Research. This post is based on a Cornerstone Research publication by Ms. Galley, Abe Chernin, Yesim C. Richardson, and Joseph T. Schertler.

This is the fourth in a series of reports that analyzes the characteristics of professional liability lawsuits filed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) against directors and officers of failed financial institutions. Lawsuits may also be filed by the FDIC against other related parties, such as accounting firms, law firms, appraisal firms, or mortgage brokers, but we generally do not address such lawsuits here.

Overview of Litigation Activity

FDIC litigation against directors and officers (D&O) of failed financial institutions has increased markedly in the fourth quarter of 2012, after a lull during the second and third quarters. In October, November, and through December 7, the FDIC filed nine new lawsuits against directors and officers of failed institutions. If additional lawsuits are filed in the last few weeks of December, the number of filings in the fourth quarter will be higher than in the first quarter, when nine lawsuits were filed. Twenty-three lawsuits have been filed to date in 2012. If the recent pace of new filings persists for the balance of 2012, we expect 26 lawsuits will be filed by the end of the year. This reflects an increased level of filing activity compared with 16 in 2011 and two in 2010. In total, 41 lawsuits have been filed since 2010 against the directors and officers of 40 institutions (two separate lawsuits have been filed against various IndyMac directors and officers).

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Enforcement Priorities in the Alternative Space

Posted by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance & Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
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Editor’s Note: The following post comes to us from Bruce Karpati, chief of the Division of Enforcement, Asset Management Unit, at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This post is based on Mr. Karpati’s recent remarks before the Regulatory Compliance Association, which are available here. The views expressed in this post are those of Mr. Karpati and do not necessarily reflect those of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commissioners, or the Staff.

I plan to speak about the Enforcement Division’s and in particular the Asset Management Unit’s priorities in the hedge fund space. I’ll discuss the importance of specialization and expertise to this effort; the risks for investors; how these risks are informed by the hedge fund operating model; and how a hedge fund manager’s business may be at odds with the manager’s fiduciary duty to the fund. I’ll also discuss the types of misconduct we’ve seen crossing our desks in the Asset Management Unit, and I’ll conclude with certain best practices to avoid the specter of an enforcement referral or inquiry.

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Implications of New U.S. Derivatives Regulations on End-Users of Swaps

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
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The following post comes to us from John White, partner in the Corporate Department and co-chair of the Corporate Governance and Board Advisory practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. This post is based on a Cravath memorandum by William P. Rogers Jr.; the full version, including footnotes, is available here.

Introduction

In the wake of the financial crisis, both the U.S. and the EU have enacted legislation to regulate the “over-the-counter” (“OTC”) swaps market and are in the process of adopting implementing rules that will make such legislation fully effective. In the U.S., Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank Act”), enacted on July 21, 2010, provides for the regulation of the swaps market and grants to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC,” and with the CFTC, each a “Commission” and together, the “Commissions”) broad authority to regulate the swaps market and its principal participants. In the EU, the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (“EMIR”) is expected to become effective during 2013 and will create a regulatory framework for the swaps markets in all EU member states.

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Internal Governance and Real Earnings Management

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Qiang Cheng, Professor of Accounting at Singapore Management University; Jimmy Lee, Assistant Professor of Accounting at Singapore Management University; and Terry Shevlin, Professor of Accounting at the University of California-Irvine.

In the paper, Internal Governance and Real Earnings Management, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine whether key subordinate executives can restrain the extent of real earnings management. We focus on key subordinate executives, i.e., the top five executives with the highest compensation other than the CEO, because we hypothesize that they are the most likely group of employees that have both the incentives and the ability to influence the CEO in corporate decisions. As argued in Acharya et al. (2011), key subordinate executives have strong incentives not to increase short-term performance at the expense of long-term firm value. This tradeoff between current and future firm value is particularly salient in the case of real earnings management (as compared to accruals earnings management) because over production and cutting of R&D expenditures are costly and can reduce the long term value of the firm.

The motivation for the research question is twofold. First, the majority of the papers in the literature explicitly or implicitly assume that the CEO is the sole decision maker for financial reporting quality and the impact of other executives has been generally overlooked. Recent studies argue that subordinate executives usually have longer horizons and they can influence corporate decisions through various means. We hypothesize that differential preferences arising from differential horizons can affect the extent of real earnings management. Second, while there are studies focusing on the impact of external corporate governance (e.g., board independence and institutional ownership), little is known about whether there are checks and balances within the management team. This lack of knowledge is an important omission because control is not just imposed from the top-down or from the outside, but also from bottom-up (Fama 1980).

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2012 Trends in Securities Class Actions

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Dr. Ron Miller, Vice President at NERA Economic Consulting, and is based on a NERA publication by Dr. Miller, Dr. Renzo Comolli, Svetlana Starykh, and Sukaina Klein; the full document, including complete footnotes, is available here.

Update: The full-year review, which includes December 2012 statistics, is available here.

The Steady Stream of Filings Has Continued Throughout 2012

The steady stream of federal securities class actions has continued unabated throughout 2012. [1] Through the end of November, 195 securities class actions were filed in federal courts—a pace that, if continued through December, would lead to a total of 213 cases for the full year. (See Figure 1.) This would put 2012 filings just slightly below their average rate over the previous five years.


Click image to enlarge

It is noteworthy that this level of filings has been maintained even though cases related to the credit crisis, which had been prominent in recent years, have all but ended. [2] For example, of the 208 filings in 2009, 59 were related to the credit crisis; by contrast, only four cases of the 195 filed through November of this year involved such allegations. While the decline in credit crisis cases itself is not surprising, it is notable that this decline has not translated into an overall decline in federal filings. The average number of federal filings in 2005-2006, just before the crisis hit, was only 160. One might have expected the rate of filings to return to this lower level after the wave of credit crisis cases subsided, but that has not happened: the plaintiffs’ bar has found new causes of action, with merger objection cases picking up much of the slack.

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Runaway MAC Carve-outs

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, January 14, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Neil Whoriskey, partner focusing on mergers and acquisitions at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. This post is based on a Cleary Gottlieb memorandum by Mr. Whoriskey.

The definition of “material adverse change” plays a critical role in public company merger agreements, effectively defining the situations in which a buyer may walk away from the transaction. There is significant case law defining what is (or, much more commonly, what is not) a material adverse change, but the case law only serves to interpret the agreed definitions. The agreed definitions, in turn, are typically very vague in defining what is a material adverse change (leaving lots of scope for judges), but explicit in listing the types of changes that may not be considered in evaluating whether a material adverse change has occurred. The use of these carve-outs to limit what may be considered a material adverse change has expanded significantly in recent years — arguably to a point where it may make sense for the pendulum to start to swing back.

It has been traditional for adverse effects attributable to changes in general economic conditions to be excluded in considering whether a material adverse effect has occurred, such that e.g., a loss of sales attributable to the great recession, no matter how severe, would not give buyer the right to terminate a merger agreement. This carve-out from the material adverse change definition can be grouped with others, such as carve-outs for downturns in the target industry, changes in law or accounting policies, acts of war, etc. — all of which shift to buyer the risks associated with the environment in which the target operates. What is notable is that over the last several years, not only has the percentage of deals that shift these “environmental” risks to buyer increased significantly, but MAC carve-outs that shift to buyer the risk of the deal, and (anecdotally at least) even the risk of running the business, have also increased markedly.

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