Yearly Archives: 2014

What Has Happened To Stock Options?

Posted by Joseph E. Bachelder III, McCarter & English, LLP, on
Thursday, October 2, 2014
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Joseph Bachelder is special counsel in the Tax, Employee Benefits & Private Clients practice group at McCarter & English, LLP. The following post is based on an article by Mr. Bachelder, with assistance from Andy Tsang, which first appeared in the New York Law Journal.

Stock options have been a part of executive pay at major U.S. corporations for approximately 100 years. They have had an important role for approximately 70 years, starting in the 1950s. They have gone through periods of extraordinary popularity (e.g., the 1990s) and have been less popular during periods when the stock markets were in the doldrums. They survived the change in accounting rules (2006) that now require them to be a charge against earnings. This post examines this history and takes a look at where options are today. [1]

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Challenging Boardroom Homogeneity: Corporate Law, Governance, and Diversity

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, October 2, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Aaron A. Dhir, an Associate Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Canada and a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

The lack of gender parity in the governance of business corporations has ignited a heated global debate, leading policymakers to wrestle with difficult questions that lie at the intersection of market activity and social identity politics. In my new book, Challenging Boardroom Homogeneity: Corporate Law, Governance, and Diversity (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2015), I draw on semi-structured interviews with corporate board directors in Norway and documentary content analysis of corporate securities filings in the United States to investigate empirically two distinct regulatory models designed to address diversity in the boardroom—quotas and disclosure.

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Treasury Department Seeks to Curb Inversion Transactions

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Jodi J. Schwartz, partner in the Tax Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and is based on a Wachtell Lipton memorandum by Ms. Schwartz and Michael Sabbah.

Yesterday [September 22, 2014], the Treasury Department and the IRS announced their intention to issue regulations (the “Regulations”) to limit the economic benefits of so-called “inversion” transactions in the absence of Congressional action. The Regulations, once issued, will generally apply to transactions completed on or after September 22, 2014. (Notice 2014-52, Rules Regarding Inversions and Related Transactions.)

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The New York Fed: A “Captured” Regulator

Posted by Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, on
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Luigi Zingales, Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago, and is based on an op-ed by Mr. Zingales that was published today in Il Sole 24 Ore, which can be found here.

The world of American finance has been invested by a new scandal. At its core, there is New York’s Federal Reserve; in other words, the institution that supervises America’s main banks. The scandal exploded because of the revelations emerged in a legal lawsuit about a layoff.

Carmen Segarra, a supervision lawyer, sued after being fired only seven months into her job. The New York Fed says it fired her due to poor performance. Segarra instead maintains that she was given the pink slip because she did not adapt to ‘Fed culture’—so permissive towards banks it regulates, almost to the point of collusion.

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Delaware Court Declines to Dismiss Claims Against Disinterested Directors

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell publication authored by Alexandra D. Korry, Melissa Sawyer, and William J. Magnuson. 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 an opinion [1] issued on September 9, 2014, the Delaware Court of Chancery (VC Glasscock) held that in a controlling stockholder freeze-out merger subject to entire fairness review at the outset, disinterested directors entitled under a company’s charter to exculpation for duty of care violations cannot prevail in a motion to dismiss even though the claims against them for breach of fiduciary duty are not pled with particularity; instead, the issue of whether they will be entitled to exculpation must await a developed record, post-trial. The decision once again highlights the litigation cost that will be imposed on companies engaged in controlling stockholder freeze-out mergers for failing to employ both of the safeguards that Delaware has endorsed to ensure business judgment, instead of entire fairness, review—(1) an up-front non-waivable commitment by the controller to condition the transaction on an informed vote of a majority of the minority stockholders and (2) approval of the transaction by a well-functioning and broadly empowered special committee of disinterested directors. At the motion to dismiss stage, disinterested directors effectively will be treated in the same manner as controllers and their affiliated directors.

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Executive Gatekeepers: Useful and Divertible Governance?

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Adair Morse of the Finance Group at the University of California, Berkeley; and Wei Wang and Serena Wu, both of Queen’s School of Business, Canada.

In our paper, Executive Gatekeepers: Useful and Divertible Governance?, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we study the role of executive gatekeepers in preventing governance failures, and the counter-incentive effects created by equity compensation. Specifically, we examine the following two questions. First, do executive gatekeepers actually improve governance in the average firm? Second, does the effectiveness of gatekeepers in ensuring compliance and/or reducing corporate misconduct depend on their incentive contracts?

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Important Proxy Advisor Developments

Posted by David A. Katz, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on
Monday, September 29, 2014
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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. The following 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.

As 2014 winds down and 2015 approaches, proxy advisory firms—and the investment managers who hire them—are finding themselves under increased scrutiny. Staff guidance issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of June and a working paper published in August by SEC Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher both indicate that oversight of proxy advisory services will be a significant focus for the SEC during next year’s proxy season. Under the rubric of corporate governance, annual proxy solicitations have become referenda on an ever-widening assortment of corporate, social, and political issues, and, as a result, the influence and power of proxy advisors—and their relative lack of accountability—have become increasingly problematic. The SEC’s recent actions and statements suggest that the tide may be turning. Proxy advisory firms appear to be entering a new era of increasing accountability and potentially decreasing influence, possibly with further, more significant, SEC action to come.

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Mandatory Disclosure Quality, Inside Ownership, and Cost of Capital

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, September 29, 2014
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The following post comes to us from John Core and Rodrigo Verdi of the Accounting Group at MIT, and Luzi Hail of the Department of Accounting at the University of Pennsylvania.

Whether mandatory disclosure regulation and insider ownership affect a firm’s cost of capital is an important question in financial economics. In our paper, Mandatory Disclosure Quality, Inside Ownership, and Cost of Capital, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine this question on a large global sample of more than 10,000 firms across 35 countries.

Theory predict that disclosure regulation is negatively related to the cost of capital due to two separate effects: (i) an information effect in which better disclosure improves investors’ prediction of future cash flows, or (ii) a stewardship effect in which better disclosure improves managerial alignment with shareholders and therefore increases expected cash flows. The stewardship effect is not unique to disclosure, but is also present in other governance mechanisms that increase managerial alignment such as inside ownership. As a result, these alternative alignment mechanisms potentially reinforce or substitute for the stewardship effect of disclosure. We test this argument by examining whether inside ownership is negatively associated with the cost of capital and how inside ownership affects the relation between disclosure and the cost of capital.

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Regulators Re-Propose Uncleared Swap Margin, Capital and Segregation Rules

Posted by Annette L. Nazareth, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, on
Sunday, September 28, 2014
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Annette Nazareth is a partner in the Financial Institutions Group at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, and a former commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The following post is based on a Davis Polk client memorandum; the complete publication, including sidebars and appendix, is available here.

On September 3, 2014, U.S. banking regulators re-proposed margin, capital and segregation requirements applicable to swap entities [1] for uncleared swaps. [2] The new proposed rules modify significantly the regulators’ original 2011 proposal in light of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s and the International Organization of Securities Commissions’ (“BCBS/IOSCO”) issuance of their 2013 final policy framework on margin requirements for uncleared derivatives and the comments received on the original proposal. The revised proposal:

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Volcker Rule: Agencies Release New FAQ

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Saturday, September 27, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell publication by Eric M. Diamond, Joseph A. Hearn, and Ken Li. The complete publication, including appendix, is available here.

[On September 10, 2014], the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the “Federal Reserve”), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (collectively, the “Agencies”) provided an addition to their existing list of Frequently Asked Questions (“FAQs”) addressing the implementation of section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, as amended, commonly known as the “Volcker Rule.”

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