Yearly Archives: 2013

Understanding the Board of Directors after the Financial Crisis

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, November 21, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Joseph A. McCahery and Erik P. M. Vermeulen, both of Tilburg University Law School.

Research on the composition and structure of the board of directors is a thriving subject in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The discussion thus far has assumed that finding the right board members is extremely important because they tend to enhance corporate strategy and decision-making. Consider the case of Apple’s board. Following Steve Jobs’ return to the firm in 1997, he understood well the important role of the board of directors to both improve company productivity and build relationships with its suppliers and customers. In order for the board of directors to become a competitive advantage and help carry Apple forward, its members needed to have a thorough understanding of the computer industry and the firm’s products. Accordingly, a change in the composition of the board of directors was arguably a necessary first step to bring back focus, relevance and interaction (with the outside world) to the company in its journey to introduce disruptive innovations and creative products to its customers. The result was impressive: Between August 6th, 1997 (the day the “new” board was introduced) and August 23rd, 2011 (the last day of Jobs as the CEO of Apple), the stock price soared from $25.25 to $360.30, increasing 1,327 per cent.

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CFTC Proposes New Position Limits and Aggregation Rules for Derivatives

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell publication by David J. Gilberg, Kenneth M. Raisler, John M. Miller, and Ryne V. Miller.

On November 5, 2013, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC” or “Commission”) held a public meeting during which it:

  • Voted 3-1, with commissioner O’Malia dissenting, to propose for public comment a new set of rules on position limits (the “Proposed Rules”) applicable to options, futures, and swaps contracts (“derivatives”) related to 28 agricultural, metal, and energy commodities;
  • Confirmed that it will voluntarily dismiss its appeal of the September 2012 decision from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (the “Court”) vacating the Commission’s previous attempt at imposing position limits across derivatives (the “Original Position Limit Rules”); and
  • Voted unanimously to propose separately for public comment rules that would expand the availability of aggregation exemptions, as compared to the Original Position Limit Rules, from the CFTC’s aggregation standards applicable to position limits for futures and swaps (the “Proposed Aggregation Rules”).

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Benefit-Cost Paradigms in Financial Regulation

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, November 20, 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.

Nearly all U.S. regulatory agencies use benefit-cost analysis (BCA) to evaluate proposed regulations. The EPA, for example, uses BCA to evaluate regulations that require factories to reduce emissions. OSHA uses BCA to evaluate regulations that require workplaces to install safety devices for workers. NHTSA uses BCA to evaluate fuel economy standards. Yet a striking exception to this pattern occurs in the area of financial regulation. The major agencies with jurisdiction over financial activities—including the SEC, the CFTC, and the Fed—have almost never used formal BCA to evaluate financial regulations.

Yet there is no reason to believe that BCA would be appropriate for environmental or workplace regulation and not for financial regulation. Indeed, BCA would seem more appropriate for financial regulation where data are better and more reliable, and where regulators do not confront ideologically charged valuation problems like those concerning mortality risk and environmental harm. The benefits and costs of financial regulation are commensurable monetary gains and losses, and so can be easily compared.

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District Court Dismisses Claim that Potential Litigation Disclosure Was Required

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Eric M. Roth, partner in the litigation department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and is based on a Wachtell Lipton memorandum by Mr. Roth.

A recent decision of the Southern District of New York is noteworthy in its rejection of the plaintiffs’ argument that disclosure of a threatened suit in which the potential loss could have reached $10 billion was required under either the federal securities laws or Accounting Standards Codification 450. See In re Bank of America AIG Disclosure Sec. Litig., C.A. No. 11 Civ. 6678 (JGK) (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 1, 2013).

In January 2011, BofA and AIG entered into an agreement to toll the statute of limitations on fraud and securities claims arising out of BofA’s sale of mortgage-backed securities (“MBS”) to AIG. In February 2011, AIG provided BofA with a detailed analysis of its potential claims in which it claimed to have lost more than $10 billion. Later that month, BofA’s annual report disclosed that it faced “substantial potential legal liability” relating to sales of MBS, which “could have a material adverse effect on [its] cash flow, financial condition, and results of operations,” but cautioned that BofA “could not estimate a range of loss for all matters in which losses were probable or reasonably possible.” BofA did not disclose the tolling agreement with AIG or the magnitude of its potential exposure to AIG. On August 8, 2011, AIG had filed a complaint against BofA seeking damages of at least $10 billion. BofA’s stock price dropped 20% in a single day.

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Zombie Boards: Board Tenure and Firm Performance

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Sterling Huang of the Finance Area at INSEAD.

In my paper, Zombie Boards: Board Tenure and Firm Performance, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, I empirically investigate how board tenure is related to firm performance and corporate decisions, holding other firm, CEO, and board characteristics constant. I find that board tenure has an inverted U-shaped relation with firm value, and that this curvilinear relation is reflected in M&A performance, financial reporting quality, corporate strategies and innovation, executive compensation, and CEO replacement. The results indicate that, for firms with short-tenured boards, the marginal effect of board learning dominates entrenchment effects, whereas for firms that have long-tenured boards, the opposite is true.

The analysis relies on the assumption that some transaction costs prevent boards from fully adjusting to their optimal tenure level. But what are those transaction costs? For long-tenured boards, transaction costs could take the form of agency costs. For instance, board tenure choice may reflect the extent to which CEOs have influence over the board selection process (Hermalin and Weisbach, 1998). Further, firms with staggered boards can only replace a portion of board member each year, in which case the use of a staggered board itself introduces agency problems (Bebchuk and Cohen, 2005). For short-tenured boards, transaction costs could take the form of frictions in the labor market for directors.

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Don’t Ask/Don’t Waive Standstills & Attorneys’ Fees in Delaware

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, November 18, 2013
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This post is based on a Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP client memorandum by Morris Nichols’ Delaware Corporate Counseling Group partners Andrew M. Johnston, Eric Klinger-Wilensky, and associate Jason S. Tyler, and Morris Nichols’ Delaware Corporate & Business Litigation Group partners William M. Lafferty and John P. DiTomo. 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.

Court of Chancery Revisits Covenants Against Waiving “Don’t Ask/Don’t Waive” Provisions

In a recent bench ruling, In re Complete Genomics, Inc. Shareholder Litigation, the Court of Chancery offered new insight into the ability of a target board to promise an acquiror that the target will not waive a “don’t ask/don’t waive” standstill provision.

A “don’t ask/don’t waive” standstill provision is typically found in a confidentiality agreement that a target requires potential bidders to enter into before being entitled to receive sensitive target information. The “don’t ask/don’t waive” provision precludes a potential bidder from making a private approach to the target board and from requesting any waiver of the standstill itself. If the target later signs a merger agreement with another party containing a negative covenant prohibiting the waiver of standstill agreements, the “don’t ask/don’t waive” and the negative covenant (the “Coupled Provisions”) preclude the previous bidder from ever providing a topping bid to the target.

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Fact and Fiction in Corporate Law and Governance

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, November 18, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Michael Klausner, Nancy and Charles Munger Professor of Business and Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.

In a recent article, entitled Fact and Fiction in Corporate Law and Governance, I evaluate two broad elements of corporate governance scholarship—one conceptual and the other methodological. The conceptual element is the “contractarian” framework within which legal academics have analyzed corporate law since the 1980s. My evaluation is not aimed at the characterization of a corporation as a nexus of voluntary associations—a characterization that I think most of us share—but rather at the belief among some legal scholars that market forces lead to optimal governance arrangements within firms, and that a market dynamic leads states to compete to provide value-maximizing corporate law rules. The methodological element that I address is the use of corporate governance indices in empirical studies of corporate governance, an approach that dates back to the 1990s but that became widespread following Gompers, Ishii and Metrick’s development of the G Index in 2003.

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Determinants and Performance of Equity Deferral Choices by Outside Directors

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, November 18, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Christopher Ittner, Professor of Accounting at the University of Pennsylvania; and Francesca Franco and Oktay Urcan, both of the Accounting Area at the London Business School.

In our paper, Determinants and Trading Performance of Equity Deferral Choices by Corporate Outside Directors, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we investigate the determinants and trading performance of outside directors’ “equity deferrals,” which represent the choice to convert part or all of the current cash compensation into deferred company stock. Director equity deferrals are interesting for two reasons. First, by deferring, the directors give up a sure amount of cash today for firm stock with an uncertain future value, while at the same time substantially increasing the proportion of their compensation that is tied to future firm performance. Second, the equity deferrals can become a form of insider trading, because directors can use these options as a tax-advantaged alternative to open-market purchases of the firm’s stock.

We examine director equity deferrals using a hand-collected sample of U.S. firms that allowed outside board members to defer their cash compensation into equity between 1999 and 2003. We first focus on the factors affecting director equity deferral choices. Consistent with a certainty equivalent story, we find that directors are more likely to defer cash into equity when they receive higher cash compensation levels and when the plans offer premiums for deferrals made into equity. Deferral likelihood also increases with the size of the taxes that are deferred.

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SEC Sanctions Adviser, Broker-Dealer and Their Owner Over ETF Trades

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Sunday, November 17, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Eric R. Fischer, partner in the Business Law Department at Goodwin Procter LLP, and is based on a Goodwin Procter Financial Services Alert by Jackson B. R. Galloway.

The SEC settled claims against a registered investment adviser (the “Adviser”), its affiliated broker-dealer (the “Broker-Dealer”), and the founder, owner, and president of each (the “CEO”) that related to (1) investments in Class A shares of underlying funds made by funds managed by the Adviser (the “Funds”) and (2) commissions paid by the Funds to the Broker-Dealer for trades in exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”). Without admitting or denying its findings, the Respondents agreed to the settlement order (the “Order”), available here, which this post summarizes.

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Achieving High Quality Audits to Promote Integrity and Investor Protection

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Saturday, November 16, 2013
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The following post comes to us from Jeanette M. Franzel, board member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. This post is based on Ms. Franzel’s remarks at the NACD 2013 Board Leadership Conference, available here. The views expressed in this post are those of Ms. Franzel and should not be attributed to the PCAOB as a whole or any other members or staff.

I want to commend the NACD on its mission to “advance exemplary board leadership” with the compelling vision of aspiring to “a world where businesses are sustainable, profitable, and trusted; shareowners believe directors prioritize long-term objectives and add unique value to the company; [and] directors provide effective oversight of the corporation and strive to deliver exemplary board performance.”

Audit committees are instrumental in achieving this vision and maintaining public trust and investor protection through their oversight of corporate financial reporting and auditing. I would also like to recognize the important role and difficult jobs that each of you have as audit committee members in these oversight functions, as well as the many other areas that are being assigned to audit committees during a time of ever increasing business complexity and risk.

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