Yearly Archives: 2014

2013 Delaware Decisions and What They Mean For 2014

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, February 20, 2014
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The following post comes to us from John L. Reed, chair of the Wilmington Litigation group and a partner in the Corporate and Litigation groups at DLA Piper LLP. 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.

Delaware’s Leading Role in Business and Business Litigation

Delaware has long been known as the corporate capital of the world. It is the state of incorporation for 64 percent of the Fortune 500 and more than half of all companies whose securities trade on the NYSE, Nasdaq and other exchanges. Its preeminence in business law started with its corporate code—the Delaware General Corporation Law—and has been enhanced by business law innovations that have led to the creation of many new business entities designed to meet the expanding needs of corporate and financial America.

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Corporate Governance and Great Recession: Germany’s Success in the Post-2008 World

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, February 20, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Pavlos E. Masouros of Leiden University, Leiden Law School.

Capitalism is abundant in contradictions that result in the production of crises. During such crises capital goes through devaluations that give rise to unemployment, bankruptcies and income inequality. The ability of a nation to resist the forces of devaluation depends on the array of institutional or spatio-temporal fixes it possesses, which can buffer the effects of the crisis, switch the crisis to other nations or defer its effects to the future. Corporate governance configurations in a given social order can function as institutional or spatio-temporal fixes provided they are positioned within an appropriate institutional environment that can give rise to beneficial complementarities.

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Majority Voting Finally Arrives in Canada

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Stephen Erlichman, securities law partner at Canadian law firm Fasken Martineau and Executive Director at the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance, a nonprofit corporation whose members are most of the largest pension funds, mutual fund managers and other money managers across Canada.

Thursday February 13, 2014 was an important day for shareholder democracy in Canada. We know that athletes train many years in order to reach the Olympics, but the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance (CCGG) also has worked publicly and behind the scenes for many years to bring majority voting to Canada. Finally, last week the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) agreed to adopt a listing requirement effective June 30, 2014 pursuant to which TSX listed companies (other than those which are majority controlled) must adopt a majority voting policy which requires each director of a TSX listed issuer to be elected by a majority of the votes cast with respect to his or her election other than at contested meetings.

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The Foundations of Corporate Social Responsibility

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Hao Liang and Luc Renneboog, both of the Department of Finance at Tilburg University.

A fundamental issue in business and economics is the sustainability—and not merely the growth—of economic development, which crucially hinges on the socially responsible operational and investment behavior of modern corporations (Porter, 1991). There is a widespread recognition, as well as growing empirical evidence, that corporate social responsibility (CSR) can substantially contribute to social progress and stakeholder wealth, including the wealth of shareholders (e.g., Dimson, Karakas, and Li, 2012; Deng, Kang, and Low, 2013). In our paper, The Foundations of Corporate Social Responsibility, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine the forces that fundamentally steer companies to behave as good citizens in society.

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Bleeders and Leaders: Redefining the 2014 M&A Banking Market

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Kamal Mustafa, Chairman and CEO of Invictus Consulting Group, and is based on an Invictus white paper by Mr. Mustafa, Malcolm Clark, and Roderick Guerin.

Many factors drive banks toward acquisitions, including increasing efficiency due to size, loan/deposit growth opportunities, or expansion of geographical footprints. However, one consideration is always dominant—improving return on investment, or ROI. Whether short, intermediate, or long-term, ROI is the most critical factor in the M&A decision.

Prior to the recession, bank M&A had settled into a well-established, time-proven approach. Bank management established targets and criteria, while investment bankers, lawyers, and accountants facilitated the M&A structure and process, weighing tax and accounting issues. Accretive to earnings gained acceptance as one of the primary justifications for a transaction.

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Merger Negotiations with Stock Market Feedback

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Sandra Betton of the Department of Finance at Concordia University; B. Espen Eckbo, Professor of Finance at Dartmouth College; Rex Thompson, Professor of Finance at Southern Methodist University; and Karin Thorburn, Professor of Finance at the Norwegian School of Economics.

In our paper, Merger Negotiations with Stock Market Feedback, forthcoming in the Journal of Finance, we investigate whether pre-bid target stock price runups increase bidder takeover costs—an issue of first-order importance for the efficiency of the takeover mechanism. We base our predictions on a simple model with rational market participants and synergistic takeovers. Takeover signals (rumors) received by the market cause market anticipation of deal synergies that drive stock price runups. The model delivers the equilibrium pricing relation between the runup and the subsequent offer price markup (the surprise effect of the bid announcement) that should exist in a sample of observed bids.

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SEC Investigations and Enforcement Related to Financial Reporting and Accounting

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Sunday, February 16, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Randall J. Fons, partner and co-chair of the Securities Litigation, Enforcement, and White-Collar Defense Group and the global FCPA and Anti-Corruption Task Force at Morrison & Foerster LLP, and is based on a Morrison & Foerster publication by Mr. Fons.

“One of our goals is to see that the SEC’s enforcement program is—and is perceived to be—everywhere, pursuing all types of violations of our federal securities laws, big and small.”
— Mary Jo White, Chair of the SEC, October 9, 2013

“In the end, our view is that we will not know whether there has been an overall reduction in accounting fraud until we devote the resources to find out, which is what we are doing.”
— Andrew Ceresney, Co-Director of the SEC Division of Enforcement, September 19, 2013

“The SEC is ‘Bringin’ Sexy Back’ to Accounting Investigations”
— New York Times, June 3, 2013

Much has changed since the collapse of Enron in 2001 and the ensuing avalanche of financial fraud cases brought by the SEC. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley raised auditing standards, imposed certification requirements on public company officers and required enhanced internal controls for public companies. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) was formed “to oversee the audits of public companies in order to protect the interests of investors and further the public interest in the preparation of informative, accurate and independent audit
reports.” [1] In pursuit of that goal, the PCAOB has conducted hundreds of audit firm inspections, adopted numerous auditing standards and brought dozens of enforcement actions against auditors for violating PCAOB rules and auditing standards.

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Governance Priorities for 2014

Posted by Holly J. Gregory, Sidley Austin LLP, on
Saturday, February 15, 2014
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Holly J. Gregory is a partner and co-global coordinator of the Corporate Governance and Executive Compensation group at Sidley Austin LLP. This post is based on an article that originally appeared in Practical Law The Journal. The views expressed in the post are those of Ms. Gregory and do not reflect the views of Sidley Austin LLP or its clients.

As the fallout from the financial crisis recedes and both institutional investors and corporate boards gain experience with expanded corporate governance regulation, the coming year holds some promise of decreased tensions in board-shareholder relations. With governance settling in to a “new normal,” influential shareholders and boards should refocus their attention on the fundamental aspects of their roles as they relate to the creation of long-term value.

Institutional investors and their beneficiaries, and society at large, have a decided interest in the long-term health of the corporation and in the effectiveness of its governing body. Corporate governance is likely to work best in supporting the creation of value when the decision rights and responsibilities of shareholders and boards set out in state corporate law are effectuated.

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Sealing the Deal

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Friday, February 14, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Frederick H. Alexander, Chair of the Executive Committee and partner in the Delaware Corporate Law Counseling Group at Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP, and is based on a Morris Nichols publication by Melissa A. DiVincenzo. 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 many jurisdictions, a statute of limitations may not be extended by contract. [1] Delaware follows this rule, so its three-year statute of limitations for contract claims generally may not be extended. [2] Moreover, under Delaware’s borrowing statute, contract claims arising outside of Delaware but litigated in a Delaware court are subject to the shorter of that three-year period or the time established by the jurisdiction where the cause of action arose. [3] Notwithstanding these default rules, the statutory limitations period can be reduced by contract. [4] While many private company acquisition agreements do in fact shorten the statute of limitations for many breaches of certain representations and warranties by providing that such representations and warranties “survive” for a shorter period, it is also often the case that buyers want certain representations and indemnification obligations to “survive” longer, and in some cases, beyond the statutory period. [5] In order to achieve such a result, parties may, under Delaware law, use a so-called “specialty” contract, i.e., a contract that is entered into under seal, which will be subject to a twenty-year limitations period. [6]

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Are Stock-Financed Takeovers Opportunistic?

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Friday, February 14, 2014
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The following post comes to us from B. Espen Eckbo, Professor of Finance at Dartmouth College; Tanakorn Makaew of the Department of Finance at the University of South Carolina; and Karin Thorburn, Professor of Finance at the Norwegian School of Economics.

In our paper, Are Stock-Financed Takeovers Opportunistic?, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we present significant new empirical evidence relevant to the ongoing controversy over whether bidder shares in stock-financed mergers are overpriced. The extant literature is split on this issue, with some studies suggesting that investor misvaluation plays an important role in driving stock-financed mergers—especially during periods of high market valuations and merger waves. Others maintain the neoclassical view of merger activity where takeover synergies emanate from industry-specific productivity shocks. This debate is important because opportunities for selling overpriced bidder shares may result in the most overvalued rather than the most efficient bidder winning the target—distorting corporate resource allocation through the takeover market.

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