Yearly Archives: 2014

Do the Securities Laws Matter?

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, May 5, 2014
, , , , ,
More from:

The following post comes to us from Elisabeth de Fontenay of Duke University School of Law.

Since the Great Depression, U.S. securities regulation has been centered on mandatory disclosure: the various rules requiring issuers of securities to make publicly available certain information that regulators deem material to investors. But do the mandatory disclosure rules actually work? The stakes raised by this question are enormous, yet there is precious little consensus in answering it. After more than eighty years of intensive federal securities regulation, empirical testing of its effectiveness has failed to yield a definitive result.

READ MORE »

SEC Provides Guidance to Investment Advisers on Use of Social Media

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Sunday, May 4, 2014
, , , ,
More from: , ,

The following post comes to us from James T. Lidbury, partner and co-head of the Mergers & Acquisitions practice at Ropes & Gray LLP, and is based on a Ropes & Gray publication by Rajib Chanda.

In response to the prevalence of social media sites featuring consumer reviews of various types of businesses, on March 28, 2014, the SEC’s Division of Investment Management published an IM Guidance Update to address concerns arising from the rating of investment advisers on such social media sites (the “Guidance Update”). Specifically, the Guidance Update clarifies the application of the testimonial rule to social media sites featuring consumer reviews, such as Yelp and Angie’s List, and sets forth the parameters for the use of such sites by investment advisers in connection with their marketing materials.

READ MORE »

Senior Manager Liability for Derivatives Misconduct: The Buck Stops Where?

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Saturday, May 3, 2014
, , , , , , , , ,
More from: , , ,

The following post comes to us from Clifford Chance LLP and is based on a Clifford Chance publication by David Yeres, Edward O’Callaghan, and Alejandra de Urioste; the full text, including footnotes, is available here.

The buck, so to speak, does not necessarily stop with the individual who personally violates the U.S. Commodity Exchange Act (“CEA”), which regulates a wide array of commodities and financial derivatives trading, including swaps (in addition to traditional futures contracts and physical commodities trading) in U.S. markets or otherwise engaged in by or with any U.S. person. Rather, as illustrated by a recent court ruling permitting regulatory charges to go forward against the former CEO of MF Global, Jon Corzine, liability can extend to senior managers, even if they are not regulatory supervisors and have not culpably participated in any misconduct.

READ MORE »

The Future of Capital Formation

Posted by Craig M. Lewis, U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, on
Friday, May 2, 2014
, , , , , , , , , , ,
More from:

Craig M. Lewis is Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. This post is based on Mr. Lewis’s remarks at the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Center for Finance and Policy’s Distinguished Speaker Series, available here. The views expressed in this post are those of Mr. Lewis and do not necessarily reflect those of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commissioners, or the Staff.

Today I’d like to talk about capital formation—one part of the Commission’s tri-partite mission to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation. There is much to be said about the Commission’s efforts to facilitate capital formation. But because I’m an economist, today I will focus in particular on some of the economic fundamentals that I believe can be considered when thinking about capital formation.

READ MORE »

Supersize Them? Large Banks, Taxpayers and the Subsidies

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Friday, May 2, 2014
, , , , , , , ,
More from:

The following post comes to us from Nizan Geslevich Packin of the University of Pennsylvania Law School; Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York.

In the paper Supersize Them? Large Banks, Taxpayers and the Subsidies that Lay Between, I provide an in-depth study of the substantial, non-transparent governmental subsidies received by the biggest banks. Though some continue to deny the existence of these subsidies, I conclude that the subsidies exist and negatively impact the financial markets. The most significant implicit subsidy stems from market perception that the government will not allow the biggest banks to fail—i.e., that they are “too-big-to-fail” (TBTF)—enabling them to borrow at lower interest rates. I outline the solutions that have been proposed and/or implemented as an attempt to solve the TBTF problem, and I suggest a new user-fees framework that can be used in conjunction with other approaches to mitigate the consequences of the TBTF subsidies.

READ MORE »

Corporate Takeovers and Economic Efficiency

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, May 1, 2014
, , , ,
More from:

The following post comes to us from B. Espen Eckbo, Professor of Finance at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

In the paper, Corporate Takeovers and Economic Efficiency, written for the Annual Review of Financial Economics, I review recent takeover research which advances our understanding of the role of M&A in the drive for productive efficiency. Much of this research places takeovers in the context of industrial organization, tracing with unprecedented level of detail “who buys who” up and down the supply chain and within industrial networks. I also review recent research testing the rationality of the bidding process, including whether the sales mechanism promotes a transfer of control of the target resources to the most efficient buyer. This literature draws on auction theory to describe optimal bidding strategies and it uses sophisticated econometric techniques to generate counterfactuals, exogenous variation, and causality. The review is necessarily selective, with an emphasis on the most recent contributions: half of the referenced articles were drafted or published within the past five years.

READ MORE »

An Upturn in “Inversion” Transactions

Posted by Adam Emmerich, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz , on
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
, , , ,
More from: , , ,

Adam Emmerich is a partner in the corporate department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz focusing primarily on mergers and acquisitions and securities law matters. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton firm memorandum by Mr. Emmerich, Jodi J. Schwartz, and Igor Kirman.

Recently, there have been a growing number of large “inversion” transactions involving the migration of a U.S. corporation to a foreign jurisdiction through an M&A transaction. Inversion transactions come in several varieties, with the most common involving a U.S. company merging with a foreign target and redomiciling the combined company to the jurisdiction of the target.

While inversion transactions tend to have strong strategic rationales independent of tax considerations, the tax benefits can be significant. These benefits are varied but start with relatively high U.S. corporate tax rates and U.S. taxation of foreign earnings when repatriated to the U.S. Among other things, an inverted company may achieve a lower effective tax rate on future earnings, be able to access its non-U.S. cash reserves in a tax-efficient way, and have a more favorable profile for future acquisition activity.

READ MORE »

2014 Proxy Season: Early Indications

Posted by Richard J. Sandler, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, on
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
, , , , , , , , ,
More from: ,

Richard J. Sandler is a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and co-head of the firm’s global corporate governance group. This post is based on a Davis Polk client memorandum.

It is still early days, but here is what we are seeing as the 2014 proxy season unfolds:

Institutional investors promote governance reforms and engagement efforts. Prior to the season Vanguard sent letters to S&P 500 companies seeking adoption of annual director elections, majority voting and the right of holders of 25% of the common stock to call special meetings. It was an unusually public move for a large institutional investor that, like others of its kind, tends to engage in quiet diplomacy. Also unusual was the call for universal adoption of this set of governance practices, in contrast to the case-by-case approach traditionally taken by institutional investors. It may signal that, at least on the governance side of these institutions, these practices are now viewed more as accepted norms than as just best practices. But there remains a disconnect between the governance and investment sides, as we continue to see institutional investors participate in IPOs for companies with none of these provisions.

READ MORE »

Public Compensation for Private Harm: SEC’s Fair Fund Distribution

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
, , , , , , ,
More from:

The following post comes to us from Urska Velikonja of Emory University School of Law.

The SEC’s success is conventionally measured by the number of enforcement actions it brings, the multimillion-dollar fines it secures, and the high-impact trials it wins. But the SEC does more than punish wrongdoing. Over the last twelve years, the SEC has quietly become an important source of compensation for defrauded investors. Since 2002, the SEC has distributed $14.33 billion [1] to defrauded investors via 236 distribution funds, usually called “fair funds” after the statute that authorizes them. [2]

READ MORE »

Inversions—Upside for Acquisitions

Posted by Daniel Wolf, Kirkland & Ellis, on
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
, , , ,
More from: , ,

Daniel Wolf is a partner at Kirkland & Ellis focusing on mergers and acquisitions. The following post is based on a Kirkland memorandum by Mr. Wolf and Todd F. Maynes.

With U.S. corporate tax rates among the highest in the world, U.S.-based companies with international operations regularly look for structuring opportunities to reduce the exposure of their overseas earnings to U.S. taxes. A recent trend driving deal activity is the prevalence of acquisition-related inversions whereby the acquiring company redomiciles to a lower-tax jurisdiction concurrently with completing the transaction. While not the exclusive driver, a significant benefit of these inversions is reducing the future tax exposure of the combined company. The tax rules applicable to these inversion transactions are inherently complex and situation-specific. Below, we outline some of the very general principles, as well as some of the opportunities and challenges presented by these transactions.

READ MORE »

Page 39 of 61
1 … 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 … 61