Monthly Archives: March 2014

Dodd-Frank Enhanced Prudential Standards for Foreign Banks with Limited US Footprints

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Luigi L. De Ghenghi and Andrew S. Fei, attorneys in the Financial Institutions Group at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, and is based on a Davis Polk client memorandum; the full publication, including diagrams, tables, and flowcharts, is available here.

The Federal Reserve has issued a final rule adopting a tiered approach for applying Dodd-Frank enhanced prudential standards to foreign banking organizations (“FBOs”). Under the tiered approach the most burdensome requirements (e.g., the requirement to establish a top-tier U.S. intermediate holding company) will only apply to FBOs with large U.S. operations, whereas fewer requirements will apply to FBOs with limited U.S. footprints.

We have summarized below the Dodd-Frank enhanced prudential standards that will apply to the following FBOs with limited U.S. footprints:

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Diversity Mandates Impacting US Financial Regulators Institutions

Posted by Russell D. Sacks, Shearman & Sterling LLP, on
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
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Russell D. Sacks is a partner in the Financial Institutions Advisory & Financial Regulatory Group at Shearman & Sterling LLP. The following post is based on a Shearman & Sterling publication by Doreen E. Lilienfeld.

There has been no shortage of press coverage about the lack of employment diversity in the financial services sector. Now, both the US Congress and the European Union have taken action in an attempt to remedy historical practices. The increased focus on the adequacy of an institution’s diversity and inclusion initiatives warrants their reexamination in light of regulatory developments and evolving best practices.

Background—The Statutory Requirements of Section 342 of Dodd-Frank

Section 342 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Section 342”) was adopted to help correct racial and gender imbalances at financial institutions and their regulators by prescribing inclusion requirements at the specified US government agencies that regulate the financial services sector, entities that contract with the agencies and the private businesses they regulate. Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California, the author of Section 342, noted that “many industries lack the inclusion and participation” of minorities and women, with none “more egregiously … than the financial services sector.” Section 342 provides the opportunity to “not only give oversight to diversity, but to help the Agencies understand how to do outreach [and] how to appeal to different communities.”

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How to Use a Bank Tax to Make the Financial System Safer

Posted by Mark Roe, Harvard Law School, on
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
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Mark Roe is the David Berg Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches bankruptcy and corporate law. This post is based on an op-ed by Professor Roe and Michael Tröge that was published today in The Financial Times, which can be found here.

A tax on the balance sheets of big banks—first proposed by US President Barack Obama in 2010 but later shelved—is back on the political agenda. Last month Dave Camp, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, put forward a proposal for tax reform that included a 0.035 per cent levy on bank assets more than $500bn. This would hit large institutions such as Bank of America, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

The aim of the Republican plan is to find tax revenue that could be used to offset cuts in income taxes on individuals. Mr. Obama pitched his proposal as a way of raising money from US banks to help repay taxpayers who had to bail them out at the height of the crisis. Neither plan aims to make the financial system safer, and neither would. But with a few alterations, a balance-sheet tax could help strengthen the banks.

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Financial Advisor Liable for Aiding Board’s Breach of Fiduciary Duty

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
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The following post comes to us from James T. Lidbury, partner and co-head of the Investment Management practice group at Ropes & Gray LLP, and is based on a Ropes & Gray publication. 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.

On March 7, the Delaware Court of Chancery published a post-trial opinion in In Re Rural Metro Corporation Stockholders Litigation (Rural Metro) finding Rural/Metro’s financial advisor RBC liable for aiding and abetting the Rural/Metro’s board of directors’ breach of its fiduciary duties in connection with the acquisition of Rural/Metro by Warburg Pincus. The decision is the latest in a series of Delaware opinions concerning conflicts of interest of banks and investment firms in advising companies in buy-out transactions.

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Court May Expand Officer/Shareholder Liability Resulting from US Customs Violations

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Sydney H. Mintzer, partner in the international trade practice at Mayer Brown LLP, and is based on a Mayer Brown Legal Update by Mr. Mintzer and Jing Zhang.

On March 5, 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed to constitute an en banc panel to reconsider a decision issued by the court in Trek Leather Inc. et al. v. United States. [1] The entire court will reconsider a July 30, 2013 decision issued by a three-judge panel holding that the government had to prove officers and/or shareholders had aided or abetted fraud, or otherwise took actions that justified piercing the corporate veil, in order to hold them personally liable for US customs law violations committed by a corporate entity. [2] If the full court overrules the three-judge panel, the benefits of incorporation would be mitigated with respect to an officer or shareholder’s actions that result in US customs law violations.

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Compensation Committee Guide 2014

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, March 24, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Michael J. Segal, partner in the Executive Compensation and Benefits Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and is based on the introduction to a Wachtell Lipton memorandum by Mr. Segal, David C. Karp, Jeannemarie O’Brien, Adam J. Shapiro, Jeremy L. Goldstein, and David E. Kahan; the complete memorandum is available here.

The past year in executive compensation has been marked by two continuing trends: (1) a continuing refinement of conceptions of so-called “best practices” advocated by certain shareholders and responses to those refinements by compensation committees, most notably in the context of the nonbinding, advisory “say-on-pay” vote required by the Dodd-Frank Act (“Dodd-Frank”) and (2) an increased desire by corporations to engage with shareholders to convince them of the appropriateness of their responses and the corporation’s compensation arrangements generally. Against this backdrop, the key challenge for compensation committee members has been to continue to approve compensation programs that directors believe are right for their corporations while maintaining a sufficient understanding of these emerging shareholder views and communicating the appropriateness of their arrangements to avoid attacks that could undermine directors’ abilities to act in their company’s best interest.

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Supreme Court Expands Sarbanes-Oxley Whistleblower Provision

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, March 24, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell publication by Robin D. Fessel, Julia M. Jordan, Theodore O. Rogers, Christina Andersen.

In Lawson v. FMR LLC, No. 12-3 (Mar. 4, 2014), the U.S. Supreme Court clarified the scope of whistleblower protection provided by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“SOX”), holding that employees of private contractors and subcontractors of public companies are protected by the whistleblower provision set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 1514A of the Act. The Court, acknowledging that the language of the Act is ambiguous, interpreted it to allow persons employed by non-public contractors to public companies—such as lawyers or accounting firms—to bring whistleblower claims under the Act. In a strong dissent, Justice Sotomayor objected to the “stunning reach” of this interpretation. The majority opinion, responding to that criticism, cited “various limiting principles” proposed by the plaintiffs and Solicitor General, which employers will need to rely on in the future. Among other things, the “limiting principles” include that the types of contractors whose employees could make use of SOX are those “whose performance will take place over a significant period of time,” and that an employee of a contractor would only be able to invoke SOX as to complaints arising out of the contractor’s “fulfilling its role as contractor for the public company, not the contractor in some other capacity.” Ultimately, however, the Court declined to address the precise bounds of § 1514A, finding that the whistleblower claims at issue fell squarely within the “mainstream application” of the statute, as both plaintiffs claimed retaliation after reporting allegedly fraudulent activity that plainly implicated mutual funds’ shareholders.

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Are Female Top Managers Really Paid Less?

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, March 24, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Philipp Geiler of the Department of Finance at EMLYON Business School and Luc Renneboog, Professor of Corporate Finance at Tilburg University.

In our recent ECGI working paper, Are Female Top Managers Really Paid Less?, we focus on the gender wage gap of executive directors in the UK. In particular, we ask the question whether female top managers are paid less than their male counterparts, whether the gender wage gap is higher in male dominated industries (such as financial services etc.), and what effects female non-executive directors and remuneration consultants exert on pay.

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Final Federal Reserve Rules for Foreign Banking Organizations

Posted by Noam Noked, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Sunday, March 23, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Joseph T. Lynyak, III and Rodney R. Peck, partners in the Financial Services Regulation practice at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and is based on a Pillsbury publication by Messrs. Lynyak and Peck.

This post describes the final regulations issued by the Federal Reserve Board (the “FRB”) on February 18, 2014, that radically modify the former requirements applicable to foreign banking organizations (“FBOs”) pursuant to the FRB’s Regulation K. The final rules (the “Final Rules”) impose various requirements on large FBOs that previously have been applied to large U.S. domestic bank holding companies and banks under the Dodd-Frank Act. In addition, however, the Final Rules also alter many of the former approaches to the regulation of FBOs in general, including the necessity for many FBOs to form “U.S. intermediate holding companies” for their U.S. operations.

Regardless of the category an FBO falls into, the Final Rules present significant additional compliance burdens.

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Toward a Global Regulatory Framework for Cross-Border OTC Derivatives Activities

Posted by Michael S. Piwowar, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, on
Saturday, March 22, 2014
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Michael S. Piwowar is a Commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This post is based on Commissioner Piwowar’s remarks at the Alternative Investment Management Association Global Policy & Regulatory Forum; the full text is available here. The views expressed in the post are those of Commissioner Piwowar and do not necessarily reflect those of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the other Commissioners, or the Staff.

International engagement has long been a fundamental aspect of effective capital markets regulation. As Kathy [Casey] noted in a speech she gave while Commissioner in 2007: “If we, as regulators, are to remain effective and relevant in meeting our mission of protecting investors, fostering capital formation and maintaining competitive, fair and orderly markets, we will need to be more nimble and responsive to market developments and rely more on cooperation and collaboration with our international counterparts.” [1]

It has become clear to me over these past few months that at no time in the Commission’s history have we been more engaged with the international community or more involved in collaborative workstreams with our fellow regulators from around the globe.

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