Yearly Archives: 2014

Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on Credit Ratings

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Bonds, Corporate debt, Dodd-Frank Act, Information environment, Ratings agencies, Reputation
More from: Darius Palia, Leo Tang, Valentin Dimitrov

The following post comes to us from Valentin Dimitrov and Leo Tang, both of the Department of Accounting & Information Systems at Rutgers University; and Darius Palia, Professor of Finance at Rutgers University.

In response to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) in July 2010. Among its various provisions, Dodd-Frank outlines a series of broad reforms to the Credit Rating Agencies (CRA) market. Many observers believe that CRAs’ inflated ratings of structured finance products were partly to blame for the rapid growth and subsequent collapse of the shadow banking system. In response, Dodd-Frank’s CRA provisions significantly increase CRAs’ liability for issuing inaccurate ratings, and make it easier for the SEC to impose sanctions and bring claims against CRAs for material misstatements and fraud.

Illinois Court Approves Single-Bidder Sale Strategy

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Bidders, Boards of Directors, Business judgment rule, Delaware law, Fiduciary duties, In re Revlon, Merger litigation, Mergers & acquisitions, Motorola
More from: Adam Hobson, David Karp, William Savitt, Wachtell Lipton

The following post comes to us from William Savitt, partner in the Litigation Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and is based on a Wachtell Lipton firm memorandum by Mr. Savitt, David C. Karp, and Adam S. Hobson. 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.

The Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois yesterday [October 2, 2014] confirmed that a Delaware board may employ a single-bidder process in a cash sale governed by the Revlon standard. Keating v. Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc., No. 11-CH-28854 (Ill. Cir. Ct. Ch. Div. Oct. 2, 2014).

The case arose from the 2011 transaction in which Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $40 per share in cash. The transaction elicited the now-conventional multiforum litigation in both Delaware (Motorola Mobility’s place of incorporation) and Illinois (its principal place of business). But the stockholder plaintiffs in Delaware dismissed their case and so only the Illinois action proceeded. Even though the merger price represented a 63% premium for Motorola Mobility’s shares and over 99% of the Motorola Mobility shares voting approved the merger, these plaintiffs attacked the deal, principally on the ground that the Motorola Mobility board should have conducted a broad auction rather than confidentially negotiate the deal with Google.

Governance, Risk Management, and Risk-Taking in Banks

Posted by René Stulz, Ohio State University Fisher College of Business, on

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Banks, Corporate culture, Risk management, Risk-taking
More from:

René Stulz is Professor of Finance at Ohio State University.

One might be tempted to conclude that good risk management in banks reduces the exposure to danger. However, such a view of risk management ignores that banks cannot succeed without taking risks that are ex ante profitable. Consequently, taking actions that reduce risk can be costly for shareholders when lower risk means avoiding valuable investments and activities that have higher risk. Therefore, from the perspective of shareholders, better risk management cannot mean risk management that is more effective at reducing risk in general since reducing risk in general would mean not taking valuable projects. If good risk management does not mean low risk, then what does it mean? How is it implemented? What are its limitations? What can be done to make it more effective? In my article, Governance, Risk Management, and Risk-Taking in Banks, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, I provide a framework to understand the role, the organization, and the limitations of risk management in banks when it is designed from the perspective of increasing the value of the bank for its shareholders and review the existing literature.

2014 CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure

Posted by Bruce F. Freed, Center for Political Accountability, on

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Accountability, Disclosure, Lobbying, Political spending, Transparency
More from: Bruce Freed, Sol Kwon, CPA

Bruce F. Freed is president and a founder of the Center for Political Accountability. This post is based on the 2014 CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability by Mr. Freed and Sol Kwon; the full report is available here. Work from the Program on Corporate Governance about corporate political spending includes Shining Light on Corporate Political Spending by Lucian Bebchuk and Robert Jackson, discussed on the Forum here. A committee of law professors co-chaired by Bebchuk and Jackson submitted a rulemaking petition to the SEC concerning corporate political spending; that petition is discussed here.

Dozens of leading American corporations have embraced political transparency without the prodding of shareholder proposals. This is a new and important finding in the fourth annual CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability released by the Center for Political Accountability on September 24.

At the same time, the Index found that companies that have already adopted disclosure and accountability continue to strengthen their policies, making them more robust and comprehensive. All this is happening in the face of intense opposition by several of the leading business trade associations.

Public Pressure and Corporate Tax Behavior

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Compliance & ethics, Disclosure, International governance, Public perception, Reputation, Tax avoidance, Taxation, UK
More from: Jaron Wilde, Jeffrey Hoopes, Scott Dyreng

The following post comes to us from Scott Dyreng of the Accounting Area at Duke University, Jeffrey Hoopes of the Department of Accounting & Management Information Systems at Ohio State University, and Jaron Wilde of the Department of Accounting at the University of Iowa.

In our paper, Public Pressure and Corporate Tax Behavior, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine whether public scrutiny related to firms’ tax avoidance activities has a significant effect on their tax avoidance behavior. In contrast to U.S. regulations that only require disclosure of significant subsidiaries, the U.K.’s Companies Act of 2006 (“Companies Act”) requires firms to disclose the name and location of all subsidiaries, regardless of size or materiality. Although the U.K. law went into effect in 2006, in 2010, ActionAid International, a global non-profit dedicated to ending poverty worldwide, discovered that approximately half of the firms in the FTSE 100 were not disclosing the name and location of all subsidiaries. ActionAid’s finding was prima facie evidence that the Companies House was not enforcing the subsidiaries disclosure requirement. More importantly, the fact that some firms chose not to comply with the law suggests that the cost of disclosing detailed information on subsidiaries was greater than the benefit of a more complete information environment for the non-compliant firms.

The Recent Evolution of Shareholder Activism

Posted by Matteo Tonello, The Conference Board, on

Monday, October 6, 2014

Boards of Directors, Engagement, Executive Compensation, Golden parachutes, Institutional Investors, Political spending, Proxy access, Proxy fights, Proxy voting, Shareholder activism, Shareholder proposals
More from: Matteo Tonello, Melissa Aguilar, The Conference Board

Matteo Tonello is vice president at The Conference Board. This post relates to a report released jointly by The Conference Board and FactSet, authored by Dr. Tonello and Melissa Aguilar of The Conference Board. The Executive Summary is available here (the document is free but registration is required). For details regarding how to obtain a copy of the full report, contact [email protected].

Proxy Voting Analytics (2010-2014), a report recently released by The Conference Board in collaboration with FactSet, reviews the last five years of shareholder activism and proxy voting at Russell 3000 and S&P 500 companies.

Data analyzed in the report includes:
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Financial Market Infrastructures

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

Monday, October 6, 2014

Clearing houses, Derivatives, EU, Financial crisis, Financial reform, Financial regulation, FSB, International governance, OTC derivatives, Systemic risk
More from: Guido Ferrarini, Paolo Saguato

The following post comes to us from Guido A. Ferrarini, Professor of Business Law at University of Genoa, Department of Law, and Paolo Saguato at Law Department, London School of Economics.

In the paper Financial Market Infrastructures, recently made publicly available on SSRN and forthcoming as a chapter of The Oxford Handbook on Financial Regulation, edited by Eilís Ferran, Niamh Moloney, and Jennifer Payne (Oxford University Press), we study the impact of the post-crisis reforms on financial market infrastructures in the securities and derivatives markets.

The 2007-2009 financial crisis led to large-scale reforms to the regulation of securities and derivatives markets. Regulators around the world acknowledged the need for structural reforms to the financial system and to market infrastructures in particular. Due to the global dimension of the crisis and the extent to which financial markets had been revealed to be closely interconnected, national regulators moved the related policy debate to the supranational level. This approach led to the international regulatory guidelines and principles adopted by the G20 and then developed by the Financial Stability Board (FSB). The new global regulatory framework which has followed has institutionalized financial market infrastructures (FMIs) as key supports for financial stability and as cornerstones of the crisis-era regulatory reform agenda for financial markets.

US Basel III Supplementary Leverage Ratio

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Banks, Basel Committee, Capital requirements, Credit exposure, Derivatives, Financial institutions, Financial regulation, Leverage, Liquidity
More from: Andrew Fei, Luigi De Ghenghi, Davis Polk

The following post comes to us from Luigi L. De Ghenghi and Andrew S. Fei, attorneys in the Financial Institutions Group at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, and is based on a Davis Polk client memorandum; the full publication, including diagrams, tables, and flowcharts, is available here.

The U.S. banking agencies have finalized revisions to the denominator of the supplementary leverage ratio (SLR), which include a number of key changes and clarifications to their April 2014 proposal. The SLR represents the U.S. implementation of the Basel III leverage ratio.

Under the U.S. banking agencies’ SLR framework, advanced approaches firms must maintain a minimum SLR of 3%, while the 8 U.S. bank holding companies that have been identified as global systemically important banks (U.S. G-SIBs) and their U.S. insured depository institution subsidiaries are subject to enhanced SLR standards (eSLR).

Questions and Answers on the Liquidity Coverage Ratio

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Banks, FDIC, Federal Reserve, Financial institutions, Financial regulation, Liquidity, OCC
More from: Byungkwon Lim, Debevoise & Plimpton

The following post comes to us from Byungkwon Lim, partner in the Corporate Department at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP and leader of the firm’s Hedge Funds and Derivatives & Structured Finance Groups. This post is based on the introduction to a Debevoise & Plimpton Client Update; the full publication is available here.

On September 3, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve (the “Federal Reserve”), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the “FDIC”) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the “OCC”) (collectively, the “Agencies”), released a final rule that applies a Liquidity Coverage Ratio (the “LCR”) to certain U.S. banking organizations (the “Final Rule”). The rule finalizes a proposal published by the Agencies on October 24, 2013 (the “Proposed Rule”), and includes a number of substantive and technical changes.

Ohio Federal Court Enforces Exclusive Forum Bylaw

Posted by Theodore N. Mirvis, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on

Friday, October 3, 2014

Charter & bylaws, Delaware law, Forum selection, Shareholder suits, U.S. federal courts
More from: David Katz, Ryan McLeod, Theodore N. Mirvis, William Savitt, Wachtell Lipton

Theodore N. Mirvis is a partner in the Litigation Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The following post is based on a Wachtell Lipton memorandum by Mr. Mirvis, David A. Katz, William Savitt, and Ryan A. McLeod. 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.

In a recent decision, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio invoked federal procedural law to enforce a board-adopted forum selection bylaw. North v. McNamara, No. 1:13-cv-833 (S.D. Ohio Sept. 19, 2014). In so ruling, the court recognized that such bylaws can promote “cost and efficiency benefits that inure to the corporation and its shareholders by streamlining litigation into a single forum.”

The litigation involves Chemed, a Delaware corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. In August 2013, the corporation’s board adopted a bylaw selecting any state or federal court in Delaware as the exclusive forum for intracorporate litigation. Several months later, a stockholder filed a derivative suit in federal court in Delaware on behalf of the corporation challenging certain conduct dating back to 2010. Shortly thereafter, a different stockholder filed substantially similar litigation, also on behalf of the corporation, against the same defendants concerning the same conduct in Ohio federal court. Invoking the bylaw, defendants moved to transfer the case to the Delaware federal district court under the federal venue statute, essentially seeking to consolidate it with the earlier-filed Delaware federal action.

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