Monthly Archives: February 2013

Don’t Make Poison Pills More Deadly

Posted by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance & Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, February 7, 2013
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Editor’s Note: Lucian Bebchuk, professor of law, economics and finance at Harvard Law School, is co-author (with Robert J. Jackson Jr.) of The Law and Economics of Blockholder Disclosure. This post draws on Professor Bebchuk’s New York Times DealBook column Don’t Make Poison Pills More Deadly.

In a column published today on the New York Times DealBook, as part of my column series, I focus on an important but largely overlooked aspect of the SEC’s expected consideration of tightening the 13(d) rules governing blockholder disclosure. The column, titled “Don’t Make Poison Pills More Deadly,” is available here, and it develops an argument I made in a Conference Board debate with Martin Lipton, available here.

The column explains that an unintended and harmful effect of the considered reform may be that it will help companies adopt low-threshold poison pills – arrangements that cap the ownership of outside shareholders at levels like 10 or 15 percent. The SEC, I argue, should be careful to avoid such an outcome in any rules it may adopt.

The SEC is planning to consider a rule-making petition, filed by a prominent corporate law firm, that proposes to reduce the 10-day period, as well as to count derivatives toward the 5 percent threshold. The push for tightening disclosure rules is at least partly driven by the benefits that earlier disclosure would provide for corporate insiders. Supporters of the petition have made it clear that tightening disclosure requirements is intended to alert not only the market but also incumbent boards and executives in order to help them put defenses in place more quickly.

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How to Prepare for Annual Meeting Litigation

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, February 7, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Regina Olshan, partner in the executive compensation and benefits practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, and is based on a Skadden alert by Ms. Olshan, Neil Leff, Erica Schohn and Joseph Yaffe.

As the 2013 proxy season is now underway, companies should be aware of the recent wave of lawsuits alleging breaches of fiduciary duties by management and directors in connection with compensation-related decisions. These suits allege deficient disclosure with respect to compensation-related proxy proposals and seek to enjoin the company’s annual meeting until supplemental disclosures are made. They primarily target proposals to increase the amount of shares reserved for equity compensation plans and advisory votes on executive compensation (say-on-pay). There also have been a handful of suits relating to proposals seeking to amend certificates of incorporation to increase the total number of authorized shares.

More than 20 such cases were filed in 2012, and the plaintiffs’ law firm predominantly initiating these suits has announced that it is investigating nearly 40 additional companies. These cases are typically filed shortly after a company files its definitive proxy statement and make generic accusations of inadequate disclosure. Some companies concerned about potential disruption to their annual meetings have been willing to settle these claims. There have been at least six reported settlements, all involving proposals to increase the number of shares authorized under equity plans. These settlements have generally involved supplemental disclosure and payment of up to $625,000 of plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees. Other companies have settled prior to the filing of a formal lawsuit. Although a preliminary injunction has been granted in only one of these cases, Knee v. Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., many cases in which preliminary injunctions were denied are still pending resolution regarding other relief requested by the plaintiffs, such as damages. An analysis of the claims made in filed cases to date may help companies decide whether to increase disclosure in their 2013 annual meeting proxy statements.

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The New Wave of Proxy Disclosure Litigation

Posted by David A. Katz, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on
Thursday, February 7, 2013
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David A. Katz is a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz specializing in the areas of mergers and acquisitions and complex securities transactions. This post is based on an article by Mr. Katz and Laura A. McIntosh that first appeared in the New York Law Journal; the full article, including footnotes, is available here.

The say-on-pay advisory vote requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 have turned out to be a fertile source of nuisance litigation filed by aggressive plaintiffs’ lawyers. The first wave of lawsuits generally consisted of after-the-fact actions targeting companies that experienced failed say-on-pay advisory votes. These initial cases, which appeared primarily to be attempts to extort settlements, were nearly all dismissed on procedural grounds. The current wave, embodied by a recent spate of lawsuits filed primarily by a single plaintiffs’ law firm, is potentially more problematic from a practical perspective for targeted companies, even though the claims involved appear to have even less basis in law or fact. The pattern of these recent actions is for a lawsuit to be filed in state court sometime between the filing of the definitive proxy statement and the date of the annual meeting, alleging that the proxy disclosure is inadequate with respect to executive compensation (or relating to the authorization or issuance of additional common shares for equity incentive plans), claiming breach of fiduciary duty by directors, and calling for the shareholder meeting to be enjoined until additional disclosure is made.

Directors and corporate managers need to be prepared for this type of proxy disclosure litigation, particularly since it appears that little can be done to prevent such lawsuits from being brought. Boards of companies that are targeted in this manner may feel significant pressure to settle because they do not want to postpone the annual meeting or, worse, face the possibility that the required say-on-pay advisory vote or other needed votes could be enjoined. However, it is worth noting that the earlier wave of lawsuits that targeted companies with failed say-on-pay votes has subsided, undoubtedly due to the discouraging results obtained by the plaintiffs in court. The same fate is likely to befall the current wave, but only if companies are willing to fight these lawsuits in court so that the plaintiffs and their attorneys encounter judicial skepticism and dismissal rather than the rewards of a quick and lucrative settlement.

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2012 Year-End Securities Litigation Update

Posted by Robert F. Serio, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, on
Thursday, February 7, 2013
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Robert F. Serio is head partner in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and co-chair of the Securities Litigation Practice Group. This post is based on a Gibson Dunn client alert.

2012 proved to be a mixed year for defendants in securities litigation, with several open questions and rare causes for optimism. The raw statistics show a steady stream of new filings, increasing median settlement amounts, and relatively low dismissal rates for existing cases. The Supreme Court will decide an important case this coming term on the issue of class certification in securities class actions, while another important case on standing awaits the Court’s decision on a pending petition for certiorari. In the appellate courts, a number of trial court decisions dismissing class action suits were affirmed, but district courts continue to issue conflicting rulings on critical disclosure issues, including the application of the SEC’s Regulation S-K to private class actions-where several courts have allowed class claims to proceed on the basis of alleged failure to disclose “known trends.”

Trial courts are issuing divergent opinions on the application of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Morrison v. Australia National Bank to claims involving the extraterritorial reach of the federal securities laws. District courts also are struggling to define who can be sued for primary liability for “making” an allegedly false statement, following the Supreme Court’s 2011 ruling in Janus Capital Group Inc. v. First Derivative Traders. We discuss each of these trends below. Finally, we summarize several notable decisions arising in the world of M&A litigation, an area of securities litigation that has shown explosive growth over the last few years. For a comprehensive review of related trends in the Securities Enforcement and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act areas, please see our 2012 Year-End Client Alerts, here and here.

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The Best-Laid Plans of 10b5-1

Posted by Boris Feldman, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, on
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
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Boris Feldman is a member of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, P.C. The views expressed in this post are those of Mr. Feldman and do not reflect those of his firm or clients.

In the world of insider trading, Rule 10b5-1 plans are a blessing and a curse: a blessing, because they enable executives to diversify their company holdings in a stable, law-abiding manner; a curse, because they tempt cheaters into hiding their malfeasance in a cloak of invisibility.

For years, 10b5-1 plans received little scrutiny. In private shareholder lawsuits, plaintiffs’ lawyers generally scrunched their eyes shut and tried to ignore them. The SEC, having created the structure, lost interest postpartum. As a result, aggressive insiders sometimes were able to use the plans in ways the framers never intended.

Recently, journalists have started to focus on the specifics of 10b5-1 plans, along with perceived abuses of them. [1] Those articles appear to have roused the SEC. So this may be a good time for counsel, both inside and outside, to revisit their existing plans. In this post, I address what I consider to be best practices under 10b5-1. This does not mean that contrary practices are improper or unlawful. Think of it, rather, as 10b5-1 for the risk averse.

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The Bar Is Rising on Sustainability Leadership

Posted by Matteo Tonello, The Conference Board, on
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
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Matteo Tonello is managing director of corporate leadership at the Conference Board. This post is based on an issue of the Conference Board’s Director Notes series by James Cerruti, senior partner of strategy and research at Brandlogic Corp. This Director Note is based on an article written by Mr. Cerruti; the full publication is available here.

Major companies across industrial sectors are putting more effort and investment into demonstrating good corporate citizenship on environmental, social, and related governance factors. However, research shows that it may be getting harder for companies to gain recognition for doing so.

Last year, Brandlogic and CRD Analytics prepared the 2012 Sustainability Leadership Report: Measuring Perception vs. Reality, marking the second year for the annual report and continuing our pioneering work in measuring and comparing real sustainability performance to the perceptions of key stakeholders. This follow-on study used the same methodology established for the inaugural report, as described in a November 2012 issue of Director Notes (see “About the Sustainability Leadership Report,” p. 2, for a summary). [1] Moreover, the follow-on study validated the methodology’s usefulness as a management framework for making decisions about if and where to invest in sustainability, both on the operational and communications fronts.

With a second set of data in hand, we are able to observe year-over-year movement. Overall, real performance on sustainability is rising, reflecting ongoing and intensifying corporate efforts to define and achieve sustainability goals.

However, perceived performance, on average, is declining. The findings suggest that it is becoming more difficult to achieve differentiation among those audiences who are most attentive to sustainability, despite a better track record. This finding is both striking and surprising. Why is perception slipping despite an increasing volume of communications around sustainability? In what follows, we explore possible answers.

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Taxing Bigness

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, February 6, 2013

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The following post comes to us from Steven A. Bank, Vice Dean and Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law.

The graduated corporate rate structure was publicly promoted as a tax on “bigness” when President Franklin D. Roosevelt first introduced it in 1935. In proposing the graduated rates, Roosevelt explained “[t]he advantages and the protections conferred upon corporations by Government increase in value as the size of the corporation increases . . . it seems only equitable, therefore, to adjust our tax system in accordance with economic capacity, advantage and fact. The smaller corporations should not carry burdens beyond their powers; the vast concentrations of capital should be ready to carry burdens commensurate with their powers and their advantages.” Given the relatively modest graduation in the original rates, however, this move is often portrayed as largely a political ploy rather than a serious tax measure. Paul Conkin noted that the 1935 tax bill in which the graduated rates were imposed “neither soaked the rich, penalized bigness, nor significantly helped balance the budget.” Even at the time its opponents called it a “legislative absurdity” enacted on the “whim” of the President. The conventional wisdom is that the graduated corporate income tax structure was designed to appeal to populist voters as part of the “rhetoric and psychological warfare” of New Deal-era politics, but was not designed to actually change the economics of operating businesses through large corporations. At best, it has been characterized as “an aid to small business.”

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Recent Developments in Executive Compensation Litigation

Posted by Richard J. Sandler, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, on
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
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Richard J. Sandler is a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and co-head of the firm’s global corporate governance group. This post is based on a Davis Polk client memorandum; the full publication, including footnotes, is available here.

I. Introduction

In the current environment and in the wake of Dodd-Frank (and, before that, TARP) mandated rules requiring shareholder advisory votes on executive compensation, shareholder-plaintiffs have more aggressively challenged executive compensation decisions. In recent months, an active plaintiffs’ bar has filed a series of cases, which generally fall into three broad categories:

  • “say-on-pay” litigation;
  • litigation relating to annual proxy disclosure, particularly with respect to equity compensation plans and say-on-pay proposals; and
  • litigation relating to Section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code.

While most of these challenges have failed on substantive or procedural grounds or both, some have been more successful, and the plaintiffs’ strategies continue to evolve. Notably, even unsuccessful claims can result in costly disruptions and/or reputational harm, especially where injunctions against annual shareholder meetings are threatened.

In this memorandum, we:

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Rule 10b5-1 Plans: What You Need to Know

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Michael Kaplan, co-head of Davis Polk’s global Capital Markets Group, and is based on a Davis Polk & Wardwell memorandum.

Rule 10b5-1 plans are back in the news. These plans are widely used by officers and directors of public companies to sell stock according to the parameters of the affirmative defense to illegal insider trading available under Rule 10b5-1, which was adopted by the SEC in 2000. Several recent Wall Street Journal articles suggest that some executives may have achieved above-market returns using the plans. [1] These articles are reported to have drawn the interest of federal prosecutors and the SEC enforcement staff. Rule 10b5-1 plans are no strangers to controversy. An academic study published in December 2006 found that, on average, trades under 10b5-1 plans outperformed the market by about 6% after six months. The resulting scrutiny did not lead to a significant uptick in insider-trading prosecutions, but did cause many companies to revisit their executives’ use of the plans. We suggested then that the potential for controversy was not by itself a reason to forego the benefits of employing 10b5-1 plans. We continue to believe that using properly designed plans is a good idea in many cases and can be at least as prudent as discretionary selling under normal insider-trading policies, with trading windows, blackouts and the like. Although regulators and the media may scrutinize trades made under 10b5-1 plans even when above board and done according to best practices, a well-thought-out and implemented 10b5-1 plan may help a company and its executives avoid or ultimately refute accusations of impropriety.

In light of the renewed focus on 10b5-1 plans, companies should review their 10b5-1 policies for conformity with current best practices. Below we provide an overview of 10b5-1 plans and some guidelines for their use.

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Benefit-Cost Analysis for Financial Regulation

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, February 4, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Eric Posner, Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research Scholar at the University of Chicago, and E. Glen Weyl, Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago.

In the past few years, several important financial regulations have been struck down by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals because the regulatory agency failed to prove that the benefits of those regulations exceeded the costs. There is no current explicit legal requirement for financial agencies to conduct cost-benefit analyses, but given vagaries in the underlying statutes, the Court has felt that it has the authority to insist on a greater degree of economic rigor than agencies often display. In a parallel development, Senator Shelby has introduced a bill that would explicitly require financial agencies to perform cost-benefit analyses. If the bill is enacted, we will see even greater bloodshed in the courts.

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