Monthly Archives: February 2014

SEC Staff Issues Further Guidance on the Proxy “Unbundling” Rule

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Phillip R. Mills, partner in the Mergers and Acquisitions Group at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, and is based on a Davis Polk client memorandum. Work from the Program on Corporate Governance about bundling includes Bundling and Entrenchment by Lucian Bebchuk and Ehud Kamar, discussed on the Forum here.

The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance recently released three Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations concerning the SEC’s so-called unbundling rule (Exchange Act Rule 14a-4(a)(3)), which requires proxies to identify clearly and impartially each “separate matter” intended to be acted upon.

Nearly a year ago, in Greenlight Capital, L.P. v. Apple, Inc., a federal court enjoined Apple from bundling four charter amendments into a single proposal. The Apple decision highlighted the lack of clarity in the unbundling rules and the risk that the SEC or an activist shareholder could challenge a company’s presentation of proposals. The new C&DIs provide bright-line guidance for amendments to equity incentive plans but leave other situations to be considered on a facts-and-circumstances basis and, implicitly, to be discussed with the SEC Staff in cases of uncertainty.

Two new concepts will need to be addressed going forward:

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The Alcoa FCPA Settlement: Are We Entering Strict Liability Anti-Bribery Regime?

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Gregory M. Williams, partner focusing on complex commercial litigation and arbitration and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act at Wiley Rein LLP, and is based on a Wiley Rein article by Mr. Williams, Ralph J. Caccia, and Richard W. Smith.

“This Order contains no findings that an officer, director or employee of Alcoa knowingly engaged in the bribe scheme.”

There are several notable aspects of aluminum producer Alcoa, Inc.’s (“Alcoa”) recent FCPA settlement. The $384 million in penalties, forfeitures and disgorgement qualify as the fifth largest FCPA case to date. Further, it is remarkable that such a large monetary sanction was imposed when the criminal charges brought by the U.K. Serious Fraud Office against the consultant central to the alleged bribery scheme were dismissed on the grounds that there was no “realistic prospect of conviction.” Perhaps most striking, however, is the theory of parent corporate liability that the settlement reflects. Although there is no allegation that an Alcoa official participated in, or knew of, the improper payments made by its subsidiaries, the government held the parent corporation liable for FCPA anti-bribery violations under purported “agency” principles. Alcoa serves as an important marker in what appears to be a steady progression toward a strict liability FCPA regime.

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Distracted Directors

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Antonio Falato, Economist at Federal Reserve Board; Dalida Kadyrzhanova of the Department of Finance at the University of Maryland; and Ugur Lel of the Department of Finance at Virginia Tech.

In our paper, Distracted Directors: Does Board Busyness Hurt Shareholder Value?, which was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Financial Economics, we examine the impact of independent director busyness on firm value in a setting that addresses a key challenge that the board of directors is an endogenously determined institution. A large number of publicly-traded firms in the U.S. have recently limited the number of multiple directorships held by their board members. For example, a recent survey shows that 74 percent of S&P 500 firms impose restrictions on the number of corporate directorships held by their independent directors, up from 27 percent in 2006, and the Institutional Shareholder Services recommends restrictions on the number of multiple directorships. Although such shareholder initiatives are consistent with standard theoretical considerations (e.g., Holmstrom and Milgrom, 1992), the empirical evidence on whether director busyness has any effect on the firm is thus far mixed. While several studies find that busy directors are associated with lower firm valuations and less effective monitoring (e.g., Fich and Shivdasani, 2006; Core, Holthausen and Larcker, 1999) others either do not, or provide mixed evidence (e.g., Ferris, Jagannathan and Pritchard, 2003; Field, Lowry, and Mkrtchyan, 2013).

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Top 5 Delaware Case Developments in 2013 for M&A Practitioners

Posted by Kerry E. Berchem, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, on
Tuesday, February 4, 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 by Elisabeth Cappuyns, Trey Muldrow, and Carlos Bermudez. This post is part of the Delaware law series, cosponsored by the Forum and Corporation Service Company; links to other posts in the series are available here.

During 2013, in addition to the important changes to the Delaware General Corporation Law (“DGCL”) and the Limited Liability Company Act, described here, the Delaware courts issued a number of decisions that have a direct impact on the M&A practice. Below are our Top 5 case law picks for M&A practitioners:

1. A new look at the standard of review in going-private mergers (the Business Judgment Rule)

In its In re MFW Shareholders Litigation (May 29, 2013) decision, the Court of Chancery held that in going-private mergers with a controlling stockholder on both sides the deferential business judgment standard of review applies, instead of the entire fairness standard, if certain procedural safeguards are included from the beginning. Specifically, the controlling stockholder has to agree at the outset to proceed with the merger only if the transaction is both (1) negotiated and approved by an attentive special committee comprised of directors who are independent of the controlling stockholder and fully empowered to decline the transaction and to retain its own financial and legal advisors and (2) conditioned on the un-coerced, fully informed and non-waivable approval of a majority of the unaffiliated minority stockholders.

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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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