Yearly Archives: 2014

Nanotechnology and the S&P 500

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, November 3, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Heidi Welsh, Executive Director at the Sustainable Investments Institute (Si2), and is based on a Si2 report.

Corporations globally have been investing $9 billion annually in nanotechnology, yet less than one-tenth of S&P 500 companies report to shareholders and other stakeholders on their involvement in nanotechnology. Although it has the potential to revolutionize industries like healthcare, information technology and energy systems, nanotechnology’s promise is tethered to unique environmental, health and safety (EH&S) issues that are not yet fully understood. Investors eyeing rapid growth and minimal regulation are engaging companies in discussions about nano-related EHS risks and recently forced a vote on the first nano-related shareholder resolution.

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Justice Deferred is Justice Denied

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, November 3, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Peter R. Reilly of Texas A&M School of Law.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), deferred prosecution agreements are said to occupy an “important middle ground” between declining to prosecute on the one hand, and trials or guilty pleas on the other. A top DOJ official has declared that, over the last decade, the agreements have become a “mainstay” of white collar criminal law enforcement; a prominent criminal law professor calls their increased use part of the “biggest change in corporate law enforcement policy in the last ten years.”

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Ten Key Points from the Final Risk Retention Rule

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Sunday, November 2, 2014
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The following post comes to us from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and is based on a PwC publication by Christopher Merchant, Frank Serravalli, and Daniel Sullivan.

This week six federal agencies (Fed, OCC, FDIC, SEC, FHFA, and HUD) finalized their joint asset-backed securities (ABS) risk retention rule. As expected, the final rule requires sponsors of ABS to retain an interest equal to at least 5% of the credit risk in a securitization vehicle.

1. A win for the mortgage industry: The final rule effectively broadens the original proposal’s exemption from risk retention requirements for Qualified Residential Mortgages (QRM) by tying the definition of QRM to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau’s definition of Qualified Mortgage (QM). This alignment abandons the proposal’s most stringent requirements to obtain the QRM exemption, including that a residential mortgage have at least a 20% down payment. The final rule also provides an additional exemption for certain mortgages that would not meet the QRM standards, e.g., community-focused residential mortgages. The immediate impact of the rule on the industry is further muted, given the significant amount of mortgages issued by government sponsored entities (i.e., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae) that are currently exempt from the rule’s requirements. It may however be too soon for the industry to celebrate, as the final rule states that the agencies will reassess the effectiveness of the QRM definition at reducing securitization risk at most four years from now, and every five years thereafter.

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CFTC Clarifies and Expands Relief Relating to Delegation of CPO Responsibilities

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Saturday, November 1, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Cary J. Meer, partner in the Investment Management practice group at K&L Gates LLP, and is based on a K&L Gates publication by Ms. Meer and Lawrence B. Patent.

On October 15, 2014, the Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (the “Division”) of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC” or “Commission”) issued CFTC No-Action Letter No. 14-126 (“Letter 14-126”), which sets forth a number of conditions with which commodity pool operators (“CPOs”) that delegate their CPO responsibilities (the “Delegating CPO”) to registered CPOs (the “Designated CPO”) must comply in order to take advantage of no-action relief from the requirement to register as a CPO. The CPO community has anxiously awaited this letter because it clarifies the activities in which a Delegating CPO may engage and still qualify for relief from the requirement to register as a CPO. Essentially, the Letter makes more liberal several of the conditions set forth in CFTC Letter No. 14-69 (May 12, 2014) (“Letter 14-69” and, together with Letter 14-126, the “Letters”), [1] with which many Delegating CPOs could not comply. In addition, Letter 14-126 makes the relief self-executing, i.e., no form requesting relief or even a notice need be filed.

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2014 Annual Corporate Directors Survey

Posted by Mary Ann Cloyd, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, on
Friday, October 31, 2014
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Mary Ann Cloyd is leader of the Center for Board Governance at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. The following post is based on the executive summary of PwC’s Annual Corporate Directors Survey; the complete publication is available here.

Over the last several years, we’ve observed certain trends that are shaping corporate governance and which we believe will impact the board of the future. We structured our 2014 Annual Corporate Directors Survey to get directors’ views on these trends and other topics including:

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2014 Corporate Governance Review

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, October 30, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Rajeev Kumar, a senior managing director of research at Georgeson Inc, and is based on the executive summary of a Georgeson report; the full report is available here.

Shareholder activism continued to thrive in the 2014 proxy season, spurring corporate action as well as renewed engagement between issuers and investors. While the total number of shareholder proposals declined in 2014, lively activity continued with calls for independent chairs as well as burgeoning growth for social issues. And while few in number, change-in-control payout proposals were notably successful for the first time this year, while equity retention proposals continued to have a weak showing. In addition, support for proxy access proposals also grew at a rate greater than any other type of proposal.

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Documenting The Deal

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, October 30, 2014
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The following post is based on a recent article, forthcoming in The Business Lawyer, earlier issued as a working paper of the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance, by Leo Strine, Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court. The article, Documenting The Deal: How Quality Control And Candor Can Improve Boardroom Decision-making And Reduce The Litigation Target Zone, is available here. 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.

Leo Strine, Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, and the Austin Wakeman Scott Lecturer on Law and a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance, gave a lecture to a the Delaware Business Law Forum that will be published in The Business Lawyer in May, next year. The essay, titled Documenting The Deal: How Quality Control And Candor Can Improve Boardroom Decision-making And Reduce The Litigation Target Zone, is available here.

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Morrison at Four: A Survey of Its Impact on Securities Litigation

Posted by George T. Conway III, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
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George Conway is partner in the Litigation Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The following post is based on a recent essay by Mr. Conway, “Morrison at Four: A Survey of Its Impact on Securities Litigation.” Mr. Conway briefed and argued Morrison v. National Australia Bank in the Supreme Court.

My essay, Morrison at Four: A Survey of Its Impact on Securities Litigation, published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform as part of a collection of essays on the shifting legal landscape governing federal claims involving foreign disputes, recounts the extraordinary impact of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd., 561 U.S. 247 (2010), in the realm of securities litigation.

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Mutual Funds and Information Diffusion: The Role of Country-Level Governance

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Chunmei Lin of the Department of Business and Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam; Massimo Massa, Professor of Finance at INSEAD; and Hong Zhang of the PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University.

If the institutions of a country (e.g., property rights and contracting institutions) jeopardize the quality of its financial market, can the market by itself put in force corrective mechanisms that counterbalance and offset such negative impact? This question is at the core of modern financial economics because it essentially asks whether the market plays a more fundamental role than institutions in shaping modern financial activities, or the other way around. While the role of institutions has many facets and is subtle in nature, in our paper, Mutual Funds and Information Diffusion: The Role of Country-Level Governance, forthcoming in the November issue of the Review of Financial Studies, we focus on one unique element of the market—the global mutual fund industry—to provide some new insights.

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ISS Proposes New Approach to Independent Chair Shareholder Proposals

Posted by Carol Bowie, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., on
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
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Carol Bowie is Head of Americas Research at Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS). This post relates to draft policy changes to voting recommendations on independent chair shareholder proposals issued by ISS on October 15, 2014.

Calls for independent board chairs were the most prevalent type of shareholder proposal offered for consideration at U.S. companies’ annual meetings in 2014. As of June 30, 62 of these proposals have come to a shareholder vote, up from 55 resolutions over the same time period in 2013. Notably, the number of proposals calling for independent board chairs has more than doubled over the past five years. Under the current policy formulation, ISS recommended against 32 of these 62 proposals in 2014. In line with results from recent seasons, independent chair proposals received average support of 31.2 percent of votes cast at 2014 meetings. Only four of these proposals received the support of a majority of votes cast.

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