Monthly Archives: October 2014

Towards a “Rule of Law” Approach to Restructuring Sovereign Debt

Posted by Steven L. Schwarcz, Duke University, on
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
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Steven L. Schwarcz is the Stanley A. Star Professor of Law & Business at Duke University School of Law.

In a landmark vote, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly decided on September 9 to begin work on a multilateral legal framework—effectively a treaty or convention—for sovereign debt restructuring, in order to improve the global financial system. The resolution was introduced by Bolivia on behalf of the “Group of 77” developing nations and China. In part, it was sparked by recent litigation in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that, to comply with a pari passu clause (imposing an equal-and-ratable repayment obligation), Argentina could not pay holders of exchanged bonds without also paying holdouts who retained the original bonds. That decision was all the more dramatic because the holdouts included hedge funds—sometimes characterized as “vulture funds”—that purchased the original bonds at a deep discount, yet sued for full payment.

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Opening Remarks at Investor Advisory Committee

Posted by Mary Jo White, Chair, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, on
Monday, October 13, 2014
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Mary Jo White is Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The following post is based on Chair White’s remarks at a recent Investor Advisory Committee meeting, available here. The views expressed in this post are those of Chair White and do not necessarily reflect those of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the other Commissioners, or the Staff.

Good morning, and welcome to today’s [October 9, 2014] meeting of the Investor Advisory Committee.

I want to touch briefly today on the Commission’s rulemaking agenda since you last met, mention a few other developments and give a brief update on the status of our consideration of your recommendations.

Rulemaking Agenda

The Commission has completed three sets of important rulemakings since your last meeting in July. They each put in place critical new investor protections to address some of the most significant risks in the securities markets highlighted by the financial crisis.

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Corporate Governance Enforcement in the Middle East and North Africa

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Sunday, October 12, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Alissa Kole Amico, corporate governance project manager for the Middle East and North Africa at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), and is based on an OECD Corporate Governance Working Paper by Ms. Amico; the complete publication is available here.

As an echo of the last financial crisis, the two themes that have arguably dominated the corporate governance debate globally are investor activism and corporate governance enforcement. Recent years have seen by all accounts the highest rates of institutional investor activism on a range of issues such as executive remuneration, non-financial disclosure and board composition, and at the same time, increased oversight and enforcement. Stewardship-oriented initiatives and rigorous enforcement activity by securities but also banking sector regulators have seen a level of heightened interest in Europe and North America, and to a lesser extent in emerging markets.

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Cross-Border Recognition of Resolution Actions

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Saturday, October 11, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell publication authored by Mitchell S. Eitel, Andrew R. Gladin, Rebecca J. Simmons, and Jennifer L. Sutton. The complete publication, including footnotes, is available here.

On September 29, 2014, the Financial Stability Board (the “FSB”) published a consultative document concerning cross-border recognition of resolution actions and the removal of impediments to the resolution of globally active, systemically important financial institutions (the “Consultative Document”). The Consultative Document encourages jurisdictions to include in their statutory frameworks seven elements that would enable prompt effect to be given to foreign resolution actions. In addition, due to a recognized gap between the various national legal resolution regimes that are currently in place and those recommended by the FSB, the Consultative Document sets forth two “contractual solutions”—that is, resolution-related arrangements to be implemented as a matter of contract among the private parties involved—to address two underlying substantive issues that the FSB considers critical for orderly cross-border resolution, namely:

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Short-Termism

Posted by Theodore N. Mirvis, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on
Friday, October 10, 2014
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Theodore N. Mirvis is a partner in the Litigation Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Last Monday I ventured into the belly of the beast by presenting the attached decks (available here and here) in Professor Bebchuk’s class at Harvard Law School. The class and discussion focused on short-termism, using the Airgas case as a jumping off point (see first deck available here) to the broader governance issues canvassed by the second deck (available here). Once again there were no answers given to the “inconvenient questions” listed on the two pager available here.

The Duty to Maximize Value of an Insolvent Enterprise

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, October 9, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Brad Eric Scheler, senior partner and chairman of the Bankruptcy and Restructuring Practice at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, and is based on a Fried Frank M&A Briefing authored by Mr. Scheler, Steven Epstein, Robert C. Schwenkel, and Gail Weinstein. 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 Quadrant Structured Products Company, Ltd. v. Vertin (October 1, 2014), Vice Chancellor Laster clarified the Delaware Chancery Court’s approach to breach of fiduciary duty derivative actions brought by creditors against the directors of an insolvent corporation. Importantly, the Vice Chancellor applied business judgment rule deference to the non-independent directors’ decision to try to increase the value of the insolvent corporation by adopting a highly risky investment strategy—even though the creditors bore the full risk of the strategy’s failing, while the corporation’s sole stockholder would benefit if the strategy succeeded. By contrast, the court viewed the directors’ decisions not to exercise their right to defer interest on the notes held by the controller and to pay above-market fees to an affiliate of the controller as having been “transfers of value” from the insolvent corporation to the controller, which were subject to entire fairness review.

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Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on Credit Ratings

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, October 9, 2014
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The following post comes to us from Valentin Dimitrov and Leo Tang, both of the Department of Accounting & Information Systems at Rutgers University; and Darius Palia, Professor of Finance at Rutgers University.

In response to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) in July 2010. Among its various provisions, Dodd-Frank outlines a series of broad reforms to the Credit Rating Agencies (CRA) market. Many observers believe that CRAs’ inflated ratings of structured finance products were partly to blame for the rapid growth and subsequent collapse of the shadow banking system. In response, Dodd-Frank’s CRA provisions significantly increase CRAs’ liability for issuing inaccurate ratings, and make it easier for the SEC to impose sanctions and bring claims against CRAs for material misstatements and fraud.

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Illinois Court Approves Single-Bidder Sale Strategy

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
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The following post comes to us from William Savitt, partner in the Litigation Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and is based on a Wachtell Lipton firm memorandum by Mr. Savitt, David C. Karp, and Adam S. Hobson. 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.

The Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois yesterday [October 2, 2014] confirmed that a Delaware board may employ a single-bidder process in a cash sale governed by the Revlon standard. Keating v. Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc., No. 11-CH-28854 (Ill. Cir. Ct. Ch. Div. Oct. 2, 2014).

The case arose from the 2011 transaction in which Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $40 per share in cash. The transaction elicited the now-conventional multiforum litigation in both Delaware (Motorola Mobility’s place of incorporation) and Illinois (its principal place of business). But the stockholder plaintiffs in Delaware dismissed their case and so only the Illinois action proceeded. Even though the merger price represented a 63% premium for Motorola Mobility’s shares and over 99% of the Motorola Mobility shares voting approved the merger, these plaintiffs attacked the deal, principally on the ground that the Motorola Mobility board should have conducted a broad auction rather than confidentially negotiate the deal with Google.

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Governance, Risk Management, and Risk-Taking in Banks

Posted by René Stulz, Ohio State University Fisher College of Business, on
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
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René Stulz is Professor of Finance at Ohio State University.

One might be tempted to conclude that good risk management in banks reduces the exposure to danger. However, such a view of risk management ignores that banks cannot succeed without taking risks that are ex ante profitable. Consequently, taking actions that reduce risk can be costly for shareholders when lower risk means avoiding valuable investments and activities that have higher risk. Therefore, from the perspective of shareholders, better risk management cannot mean risk management that is more effective at reducing risk in general since reducing risk in general would mean not taking valuable projects. If good risk management does not mean low risk, then what does it mean? How is it implemented? What are its limitations? What can be done to make it more effective? In my article, Governance, Risk Management, and Risk-Taking in Banks, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, I provide a framework to understand the role, the organization, and the limitations of risk management in banks when it is designed from the perspective of increasing the value of the bank for its shareholders and review the existing literature.

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2014 CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure

Posted by Bruce F. Freed, Center for Political Accountability, on
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
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Bruce F. Freed is president and a founder of the Center for Political Accountability. This post is based on the 2014 CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability by Mr. Freed and Sol Kwon; the full report is available here. Work from the Program on Corporate Governance about corporate political spending includes Shining Light on Corporate Political Spending by Lucian Bebchuk and Robert Jackson, discussed on the Forum here. A committee of law professors co-chaired by Bebchuk and Jackson submitted a rulemaking petition to the SEC concerning corporate political spending; that petition is discussed here.

Dozens of leading American corporations have embraced political transparency without the prodding of shareholder proposals. This is a new and important finding in the fourth annual CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability released by the Center for Political Accountability on September 24.

At the same time, the Index found that companies that have already adopted disclosure and accountability continue to strengthen their policies, making them more robust and comprehensive. All this is happening in the face of intense opposition by several of the leading business trade associations.

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