Monthly Archives: August 2013

The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism

Posted by Lucian Bebchuk, Harvard Law School, Alon Brav, Duke University, and Wei Jiang, Columbia Business School, on
Monday, August 19, 2013
, , ,
More from: , ,

Lucian Bebchuk is Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance at Harvard Law School. Alon Brav is Professor of Finance at Duke University. Wei Jiang is Professor of Finance at Columbia Business School. This post is based on their study, The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism, available here. An op-ed about the article published in the Wall Street Journal summarizing the results of the study is available here.

We recently completed an empirical study, The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism, that tests the empirical validity of a claim that has been playing a central role in debates on corporate governance – the claim that interventions by activist shareholders, and in particular activist hedge funds, have an adverse effect on the long-term interests of companies and their shareholders. While this “myopic activists” claim has been regularly invoked and has had considerable influence, its supporters have thus far failed to back it up with evidence. Our study presents a comprehensive empirical investigation of this claim. Our findings have important policy implications for ongoing policy debates on corporate governance and the rights and role of shareholders.

Below is a more detailed account of the analysis in our study:

READ MORE »

“Cowboy Company”

Posted by Bart Chilton, Commissioner, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, on
Monday, August 19, 2013
, , , , , , ,
More from:

Bart Chilton is a Commissioner at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This post is based on Commissioner Chilton’s remarks to the Amcot 2013 Business Conference in Lake Tahoe, California, available here.

When people think of Tahoe, they may ponder “Tahoe, oh—skiing, the Lake, maybe golf or gambling. Heck, let’s go.” But today, well, let’s switch it up and talk about the Old West and Tahoe aglow, back in the day. This is a fitting place to do just that. The Ponderosa Ranch, from Bonanza, was just over yonder, on the Nevada side of the Lake. Remember the Cartwright’s? There was Ben who survived three wives, but begets a son from each one: Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe. And just a few miles from here, they hold the Genoa Cowboy Festival at the site of the first ranch in Nevada. (Not the Mustang Ranch—that’s 15 minutes east of Reno. Hey, you at the door, where ya going?) The first ranch in Nevada was Trimmer Ranch No. 1. Let’s assume there were others. The oldest saloon in Nevada is also in Genoa. A portion of the original bar from the 1800’s is still in use. And, the local phone book lists at least 25 places to “get your boots on” and get a pair.

Right about now, some of you might be thinking, “Whoa, hold your horses there, long hair.” Isn’t this supposed to be about financial regulation or commodity markets or something?” Yeah, Sundance, it is. We’re just going to kick up the dust a bit as we “tumble along with the tumbling tumbleweeds” and have our cordial conversationalizing. After all, like George Strait sings, “I ain’t here for a long time. I’m here for a good time.” So, let’s get to it and talk some about the Old West and our financial markets today.

READ MORE »

Remuneration Regulation in the European Financial Services Industry

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Sunday, August 18, 2013
, , , , , , , , , , , ,
More from: ,

The following post comes to us from Edmond T. FitzGerald, partner and head of the Executive Compensation Group at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, and is based on a Davis Polk client memorandum. The complete publication, including footnotes, is available here.

The move toward stricter regulation of remuneration in the financial services industry in the European Union has resulted in a confusing web of overlapping European Directives and local EU Member State law and regulation, each of which seeks to place limits on remuneration. This post aims to assist in navigating the new European labyrinth by providing a snapshot of the three main European Directives that regulate remuneration:
  • Capital Requirements Directive IV (CRD IV);
  • Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD); and
  • fifth Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities Directive (UCITS V).

In addition, this post discusses the European Securities Market Authority’s (ESMA) recent Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) Guidelines on remuneration policies and practices. The post then considers the additional requirements on remuneration that the UK is planning to impose in relation to the financial services industry.

READ MORE »

Basel Committee Updates Framework for Assessing Equity Surcharge

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Saturday, August 17, 2013
, , , , , , , ,
More from: , ,

The following post comes to us from Andrew R. Gladin and Mark J. Welshimer, partners in the Financial Institutions and Corporate and Finance Groups at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell publication.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (the “BCBS”) [1] recently issued a revised framework (the “Revised G-SIB Framework”) for assessing a common equity surcharge on certain designated global systemically important banks (“G-SIBs”) [2] that updates and replaces the framework for assessing the G-SIB capital surcharge issued by the BCBS in November 2011 (the “Prior G-SIB Framework”). [3] The Revised G-SIB Framework largely maintains the Prior G-SIB Framework’s indicator-based approach for determining when a capital surcharge will be applied and does not change the calibration of the surcharge. However, the Revised G-SIB Framework makes several noteworthy changes to, and clarifies important aspects of, the Prior G-SIB Framework, including:

READ MORE »

CFTC Issues Guidance Regarding Cross-Border Swaps

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Friday, August 16, 2013
, , , , , , , , ,
More from: ,

The following post comes to us from Joshua Cohn, partner focusing on Derivatives & Structured Products at Mayer Brown LLP, and is based on a Mayer Brown legal update. The complete publication, including footnotes and appendices, is available here.

On July 12, 2013, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) approved the issuance of an interpretive guidance and policy statement (the “Guidance”) regarding the cross-border application of the swaps provisions of Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank Act”). Although the CFTC may continue to refine its approach to the cross-border regulation of swaps, the Guidance is intended to finalize the proposed interpretive guidance and policy statement issued on July 12, 2012 (the “Proposed Guidance”). Like the Proposed Guidance before it, the Guidance represents the CFTC’s attempt to meet its statutory mandate to (1) regulate swaps that “have a direct and significant connection with activities in, or effect on, commerce of the United States” and (2) prevent the evasion of the swaps provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act.

In brief, the Guidance: (1) defines “US person” and “non-US person,” which are key for applying the CFTC’s extraterritorial framework; (2) establishes the calculation and aggregation methodologies used for determining whether non-US persons engage in swap transactions at levels that trigger swap dealer (“SD”) or major swap participant (“MSP”) registration; (3) categorizes “Entity-Level Requirements” and “Transaction-Level Requirements” and describes their extraterritorial application; (4) discusses the “substituted compliance” framework; and (5) describes the requirements applicable to nonregistered swap participants (“Non-Registrants”).

The CFTC also issued an exemptive order (the “Order”) that effectively provides for the phased implementation of certain aspects of the Guidance. The Order, in many respects, builds upon relief granted in prior CFTC exemptive orders.

READ MORE »

Harpooning the London Whale is no Substitute for Reform

Posted by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance & Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, August 15, 2013
, , , , ,
More from:
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 based on an op-ed by Professor Roe that was published today in The Financial Times, which can be found here.

And so the drama moves on to a courtroom. Two prime traders in JPMorgan Chase’s “London whale” misadventure have been indicted. Side plots may unfold, perhaps via extradition proceedings. But here is the big question: will the indictments lead to better, stronger financial markets? Well, yes and no.

Recall the problem: JPMorgan’s London trading desk made trades that would be profitable if the post-crisis American economy remained weak. As the economy improved, the traders sought to reverse the investments, but could not, ultimately losing the bank and its shareholders $6bn.

The indictments are not for the loss, but for deliberately misstating the size of the loss to higher-ups at the bank. That, in turn, led to misstated financial statements to the public and the bank’s regulators. Whether higher-ups pushed for lower reported losses remains to be seen.

Misleading the regulators is serious: if the losses threatened the bank itself, the regulators would have needed to know early so they could act. True, JPMorgan is well capitalised so a $6bn loss was painful but not life threatening; and, the indictment says, the deception was sized in hundreds of millions of dollars. But regulators still want to be alerted, to see if other big institutions were making similar bets. The financial crisis hit in 2008 because too many made similar (bad) bets on the American housing market’s ability to support its massive levels of poor-quality mortgage securities. An early warning system will not work if financiers hide problems.

READ MORE »

Managerial Incentives and Management Forecast Precision

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, August 15, 2013
, , , , ,
More from: , ,

The following post comes to us from Qiang Cheng, Professor of Accounting at Singapore Management University; Ting Luo of the Department of Accounting at Tsinghua University; and Heng Yue, Professor of Accounting at Peking University.

In our paper, Managerial Incentives and Management Forecast Precision, forthcoming in The Accounting Review, we focus on one important characteristic of management forecasts—forecast precision—and examine how managerial incentives affect the choice of forecast precision. We choose to focus on forecast precision (or specificity, as it is sometimes referred to in the literature) for two reasons. First, precision is one of the most important forecast characteristics over which managers have a great deal of discretion. Managers can issue qualitative or quantitative forecasts, and the latter may take the form of point forecasts, range forecasts, or open-ended forecasts. More than 80% of the quantitative forecasts compiled by Thomas Financial are in the range format (i.e., estimates with explicit upper and lower bounds), and there is a large degree of variation in forecast width (i.e., the difference between the upper and lower bounds). One might even argue that managers have greater discretion over the precision of their earnings forecasts than over whether to provide forecasts in the first place (Hirst et al. 2008). Managers cannot always withhold information because it is part of their fiduciary duty to update and correct previous disclosures. Furthermore, withholding information can lead to considerable litigation risks and can cause great damage to a manager’s reputation (Skinner 1994). Second, forecast precision has a significant effect on market reactions to management forecasts. A number of theoretical papers, such as Kim and Verrecchia (1991) and Subramanyam (1996), argue that the magnitude of the market reaction to a disclosure is positively related to its precision, and empirical studies examining the impact of management forecast precision on stock returns and analyst forecast revisions provide support for this argument (e.g., Baginski et al. 1993; Baginski et al. 2007).

READ MORE »

DGCL Amended to Authorize Public Benefit Corporations

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, August 15, 2013
, , , , , , , ,
More from: ,

The following post comes to us from Frederick H. Alexander, partner in the Delaware Corporate Law Counseling Group at Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP. 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.

Beginning on August 1, 2013, the Delaware General Corporation Law will authorize the formation of public benefit corporations. The new provisions will allow entrepreneurs and investors to create for-profit Delaware corporations that are charged with promoting public benefits. These provisions modify the fiduciary duties of directors of PBCs by requiring them to balance such benefits with the economic interests of stockholders. In addition, the new provisions will require public benefit corporations to report to their stockholders with respect to the advancement of such non-stockholder interests.

Below are a few of the more salient elements of Delaware’s public benefit corporation legislation:

READ MORE »

The Effect of Delaware Doctrine on Freezeout Structure and Outcomes

Posted by Guhan Subramanian, Harvard Law School, on
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
, , , , , , , ,
More from: ,

Guhan Subramanian is the Joseph Flom Professor of Law and Business at the Harvard Law School. The following post is based on a paper co-authored by Professor Subramanian and Fernan Restrepo of Stanford Law School. 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.

Historically, buyouts by controlling shareholders (also known as “going-private transactions,” “squeeze-outs,” and hereinafter “freezeouts”) were subject to different standards of judicial scrutiny under Delaware corporate law based on the transactional form used by the controlling shareholder to execute the deal. In a line of cases dating back at least to the Delaware Supreme Court’s 1994 decision in Kahn v. Lynch Communications, a freezeout executed as a statutory merger was subject to stringent “entire fairness” review, due to the self-dealing nature of the transaction. In contrast, in a line of cases beginning with the Delaware Chancery Court’s 2001 opinion in In re Siliconix Inc. Shareholder Litigation, a freezeout executed as a tender offer was subject to deferential business judgment review.

Subramanian (2007) presents evidence that, after Siliconix, minority shareholders received less in tender offer freezeouts than in merger freezeouts. Restrepo (2013) finds that these differences in outcomes occurred only after Siliconix, and that the incidence of tender offer freezeouts increased after this opinion, also supporting the idea that controlling shareholders took advantage of the opportunity provided by Siliconix. Subramanian (2005) describes why these differences in outcomes for minority shareholders create a social welfare loss and not just a one-time wealth transfer from minority shareholders to the controlling shareholder.

READ MORE »

Assumption of Liabilities in Carve-out Transactions

Posted by Barbara Becker and Eduardo Gallardo, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, on
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
, , ,
More from: , , , ,

Barbara L. Becker is partner and co-chair of the Mergers and Acquisitions Practice Group at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and Eduardo Gallardo is a partner focusing on mergers and acquisitions, also at Gibson Dunn. The following post is based on a Gibson Dunn M&A report excerpt by Todd E. Truitt and Taylor Hathaway-Zepeda. The full publication is available here.

One of the most difficult, and therefore most heavily negotiated, issues in carve-out transactions is the division of liabilities between the parent and the carved-out business. Typically, the division of liabilities will follow the business: liabilities attributable to the parent’s business will be retained by the parent, and liabilities attributable to the subsidiary or division’s business will be assigned to the subsidiary or division. As explained below, in the case of an M&A transaction, this application can vary depending on whether the transaction is a stock sale or an asset sale. [1]

  • Stock Sale. In a stock sale, liabilities of the carved-out entity typically pass to the buyer by operation of law. The carved-out entity is acquired “as is” with all of its existing liabilities. However, to the extent the parent is creditworthy, the buyer may be able to obtain protection from certain liabilities through indemnification.
  • Asset Sale. In an asset sale, by contrast, the buyer is contractually responsible only for those liabilities that it specifically assumes as part of the negotiated asset purchase agreement. This flexibility allows the parties to choose from any number of liability arrangements, from “all liabilities resulting from the ownership and operation of the carved-out division” to only specifically enumerated liabilities in a schedule, with the parent typically providing unlimited indemnification for all other liabilities. However, even where the buyer does not expressly agree to assume any liabilities, the buyer should be aware that it may nonetheless be subject to certain successor liabilities arising out of the asset purchase. [2]
  • Applicable Law. No matter what the transaction structure, both parties should be aware that under applicable state, federal or international law, certain environmental, product and employee liabilities may pass to the buyer or be retained by the parent even if the parties have contractually provided for another allocation.

READ MORE »

Page 3 of 6
1 2 3 4 5 6