Yearly Archives: 2014

Acquisition Financing 2014: the Year Behind and the Year Ahead

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Eric M. Rosof, partner focusing on financing for corporate transactions at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and is based on a Wachtell Lipton memorandum by Mr. Rosof, Joshua A. Feltman, and Gregory E. Pessin.

Following a robust 2012, the financing markets in 2013 continued their hot streak. Syndicated loan issuances topped $2.1 trillion, a new record in the United States. However, as in 2012, financing transactions in the early part of 2013 were devoted mostly to refinancings and debt maturity extensions rather than acquisitions. In fact, new money debt issuances were at record lows during the first half of 2013. The second half of 2013, though, saw an increase in M&A activity generally, and acquisition financing in the fourth quarter and early 2014 increased as a result.

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Jamie Dimon’s Pay Raise Sends Mixed Signals on Culture and Accountability

Posted by Benjamin W. Heineman, Jr., Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, on
Monday, February 3, 2014
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Ben W. Heineman, Jr. is a former GE senior vice president for law and public affairs and a senior fellow at Harvard University’s schools of law and government. This post is based on an article that appeared in the Harvard Business Review online, which is available here.

The JP Morgan Chase board of directors has vexed the world with its terse announcement in a recent 8-K filing that CEO Jamie Dimon would receive a big pay raise—$20 million in total pay for 2013, up from $11.5 million for 2012, a 74 percent increase.

Not surprisingly, the news sparked strong reactions, from indignant critique to justification and support. Dimon’s raise obviously has special resonance because JP Morgan’s legal woes were one of the top business stories last year as it agreed to $20 billion in payments to settle a variety of cases involving the bank’s conduct since 2005 when Dimon became JPM CEO. But the ultimate question that gets fuzzed-over in the filing and response is one of culture and accountability—whether a long-serving CEO is accountable for a corporate culture that has spawned major regulatory inquiries and settlements across a broad range of legal issues, even though the firm has otherwise performed well commercially.

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Governance Practices for IPO Companies: A Davis Polk Survey

Posted by Richard J. Sandler, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, on
Monday, February 3, 2014
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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.

Amid the recent uptick in U.S. IPO transactions to levels not seen since the heady days of 1999 and 2000, Davis Polk’s pipeline of deals remains robust, leading us to believe that strength in the U.S. IPO market will continue in the near future. With ongoing pressure on companies that are past the IPO stage to update or modify their corporate governance practices to align with the views of some shareholders and proxy advisory groups, we thought this would be a good time to review corporate governance practices of newly public companies to see if they have also shifted in recent years. Our survey is an update of our October 2011 survey and focuses on corporate governance at the time of the IPO for the 100 largest U.S. IPOs from September 2011 through October 2013. Results are presented separately for controlled companies and non-controlled companies in recognition of their different governance profiles.

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Interim Final Rule Exempts Some CDOs from Volker Rule Restrictions

Posted by H. Rodgin Cohen, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, on
Monday, February 3, 2014
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H. Rodgin Cohen is a partner and senior chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP focusing on acquisition, corporate governance, regulatory and securities law matters. This post is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell publication by Mr. Cohen, Mitchell S. Eitel, Eric M. Diamond, and Joseph A. Hearn.

Earlier this evening [January 14, 2014], the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the “OCC”), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (such three agencies together, the “Banking Agencies”), Securities and Exchange Commission, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC” and, collectively, the “Agencies”) issued an interim final rule (the “Interim Final Rule”) regarding the treatment of certain collateralized debt obligations backed by trust preferred securities (“TruPS-backed CDOs”) under the final rule (the “Final Rule”) implementing Section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank Act”), commonly known as the “Volcker Rule.” The Volcker Rule imposes broad restrictions on proprietary trading and investing in and sponsoring private equity and hedge funds (“covered funds”) by banking organizations and their affiliates.

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The Role of Social Enterprise and Hybrid Organizations

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, February 3, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Ofer Eldar of Yale Law School.

In my paper, The Role of Social Enterprise and Hybrid Organizations, which was recently made available on SSRN, I advance a theory of hybrid organizations that combine profit-seeking and social missions.

Recent years have brought remarkable growth in hybrid organizations, including firms that pursue corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) policies, socially responsible investment firms, and environmentally-friendly firms. In addition, much attention has focused on a broad but vaguely defined group of hybrid organizations which are commonly referred to as “social enterprises”; these include microfinance institutions, businesses that sell fair trade products, work integration firms, and companies that sell affordable products in developing countries (e.g., eyeglasses and bed-nets). Despite popular enthusiasm for hybrid organizations, legal reforms to facilitate their formation and growth—including, in particular, special enabling statutes for hybrid firms (e.g., the Low-Profit LLC and the Benefit Corporation)—have largely been ineffective. This failure stems in large part from the lack of a theory that identifies the structural and functional elements that make some types of hybrid organizations more effective than others. Rather, legal and economic scholars tend to treat different forms of hybrids, especially social enterprises and firms implementing CSR policies, as essentially the same form of enterprise, i.e., firms with a mixed profit and social mission.

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Practice Tips for M&A Practitioners for 2014

Posted by Kerry E. Berchem, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, on
Sunday, February 2, 2014
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Kerry E. Berchem is partner and co-head of corporate practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. The following post is based on an Akin Gump Client Alert. 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.

Based on a number of cases decided by the Delaware courts in 2013, below we summarize practice tips regarding careful drafting of contractual provisions and complying with technical and statutory requirements.

Disclaimers of Reliance and Accuracy Clauses Likely Do Not Bar Fraud Claims

The Delaware courts have had several opportunities to examine a range of disclaimer provisions in agreements, usually an integration (or “entire agreement”) clause and a disclaimer of extra-contractual statements, to determine if they were adequate in barring fraud claims. Although in the past the courts have disallowed fraud claims based on rather thinly worded disclaimers of extra-contractual statements (i.e., disclaimers that do not include an express statement of non-reliability or non-reliance), recently the courts seem to be requiring an express statement that the buyer was not relying on extra-contractual statements to bar such fraud claims. See, for example, the decisions of the Court of Chancery in Anvil Holding Corporation v. Iron Acquisition Company, Inc. (May 17, 2013), and of the Superior Court in Alltrista Plastics, LLC v. Rockline Industries (September 4, 2013) and TEK Stainless Piping Products, Inc. v. Smith (October 14, 2013).

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Selected Issues for Boards of Directors in 2014

Posted by Alan L. Beller, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, on
Saturday, February 1, 2014
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Alan L. Beller is a partner focusing on complex securities, corporate governance and corporate matters at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. This post is based on a Cleary Gottlieb memorandum.

Over the past year, boards of directors continued to face increasing scrutiny from shareholders and regulators, and the consequences of failures became more serious in terms of regulatory enforcement, shareholder litigation and market reaction. We expect these trends to continue in 2014, and proactive board oversight and involvement will remain crucial in this challenging environment.

During 2013, activist investors publicly pressured all types of companies—large and small, high-flyers and laggards—to pursue strategies focused on short-term returns, even if inconsistent with directors’ preferred, sustainable long-term strategies. In addition, activists increasingly focused on governance issues, resulting in heightened shareholder scrutiny and attempts at participation in areas that historically have been management and board prerogatives. We expect increased activism in the coming year. We also expect boards to continue to have to grapple with oversight of complex issues related to executive compensation, shareholder litigation over significant transactions, risk management, tax strategies, proposed changes to audit rules, messaging to shareholders and the market, and board decision-making processes. And, as evidenced in recent headlines, in 2014 the issue of cybersecurity will demand the attention of many boards.

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Cost-Benefit Analysis of Financial Regulation: Case Studies and Implications

Posted by John Coates, Harvard Law School, on
Friday, January 31, 2014
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John Coates is the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act mandated over 200 new rules, bringing renewed attention to the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in financial regulation. CBA proponents and industry advocates have criticized the independent financial regulatory agencies for failing to base the new rules on CBA, and many have sought to mandate judicial review of quantified CBA (examples of “white papers” advocating CBA of financial regulation can be found here and here). An increasing number of judicial challenges to financial regulations have been brought in the D.C. Circuit under existing law, many successful, and bills have been introduced in Congress to mandate CBA of financial regulation.

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Ten Changes to Expect from the SEC’s New Enforcement Program

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Friday, January 31, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Jon N. Eisenberg, partner in the Government Enforcement practice at K&L Gates LLP, and is based on a K&L Gates publication by Mr. Eisenberg.

Investors, borrowers, financial institutions, and the economy were not the only casualties of the financial crisis. Regulators were casualties too, and the SEC was one of the hardest hit. Two Harris Polls—one conducted in 2007 before the financial crisis and the other in 2009 after much of the damage had been done—tell the story. Between 2007 and 2009, favorable ratings of the SEC dropped from 71% to 29%, while the percentage of the public rating it fair or poor rose from 25% to 72%. “By a wide margin,” the Harris organization stated, “[this was] the biggest change in an agency’s ratings since these questions were first asked in 2000.” Indeed, the SEC’s 29% positive rating was a full 15 points worse than even the second-lowest rated agency in the survey. Congress attacked the Commission as well, as when Long Island Representative Gary Ackerman burst out in a hearing, “Whose job is it to protect the investors? Because I wanna tell them that they suck at it.” And the press was also merciless, as when reporter Charlie Gasparino urged, “the SEC should be disbanded.”

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The Impact of Venture Capital Monitoring

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, January 30, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Shai Bernstein of the Finance Area at Stanford University, Xavier Giroud of the Finance Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Richard Townsend of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

It is often argued that venture capital (VC) plays an important role in promoting innovation and growth. Consistent with this belief, governments around the world have pursued a number of policies aimed at fostering local venture capital activity. The goal of these policies has been to replicate the success of regions like Silicon Valley in the United States. However, there remains scarce evidence that the activities of venture capitalists actually play a causal role in stimulating the creation of innovative and successful companies. Indeed, venture capitalists may simply select companies that are poised to innovate and succeed, even absent their involvement. In this case, efforts by policy-makers to foster local venture capital activity would be misguided. In our paper, The Impact of Venture Capital Monitoring: Evidence from a Natural Experiment, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine whether the activities of venture capitalists do indeed affect portfolio company outcomes.

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