Monthly Archives: February 2015

Aligning the Interests of Company Executives and Directors with Shareholders

Luis A. Aguilar is a Commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This post is based on Commissioner Aguilar’s recent public statement; the full text, including footnotes, is available here. The views expressed in the post are those of Commissioner Aguilar and do not necessarily reflect those of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the other Commissioners, or the Staff.

Today [February 9, 2015], the Commission issued proposed rules on Disclosure of Hedging by Employees, Officers and Directors. These congressionally-mandated rules are designed to reveal whether company executive compensation policies are intended to align the executives’ or directors’ interests with shareholders. As required by Section 955 of the Dodd-Frank Act, these proposed rules attempt to accomplish this by adding new paragraph (i) to Item 407 of Regulation S-K, to require companies to disclose whether they permit employees and directors to hedge their companies’ securities.

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Cybersecurity and Privacy Diligence in a Post-Breach World

Paul A. Ferrillo is counsel at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP specializing in complex securities and business litigation. This post is based on a Weil Alert authored by Mr. Ferrillo and Randi Singer; the complete publication, including footnotes, is available here.

“By the time you hear thunder, it’s too late to build the ark.”
— Unknown

In November 2014—just two weeks after Admiral Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, testified to the House Intelligence Committee that certain nation-state actors had the capability of “infiltrating the networks of industrial-control systems, the electronic brains behind infrastructure like the electrical grid, nuclear power plants, air traffic control and subway systems”—Sony Pictures announced it had experienced a major cyber-attack, one many sources believe was likely perpetrated by or on behalf of a nation-state. This destructive cyber-attack was a game-changer for corporate America because it became clear that hackers are not simply focused on credit card numbers or personal information. Indeed, the attack on Sony was designed to steal the Company’s intellectual property, disseminate personal emails of high-ranking executives, and destroy Sony servers and hard drives, rendering them useless.

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2014 Year-End Review of BSA/AML and Sanctions Developments

The following post comes to us from Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell publication by Elizabeth T. Davy, Jared M. Fishman, Eric J. Kadel Jr., and Jennifer L. Sutton; the complete publication is available here.

This post highlights what we believe to be the most significant developments during 2014 for financial institutions with respect to U.S. Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (“BSA/AML”) and U.S. sanctions programs, including sanctions administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), and identifies significant trends. The overarching trend that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future is an intense focus on BSA/AML and sanctions compliance by multiple government agencies, combined with increasing regulatory expectations and significant enforcement actions and penalties.

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Beyond Term Limits: Using Performance Management to Guide Board Renewal

The following post comes to us from Stan Magidson, President and CEO of the Institute of Corporate Directors and Chair of the Global Network of Directors Institutes. This post is based on portions of an ICD publication titled Beyond Term Limits: Using Performance Management to Guide Board Renewal; the complete survey is available here.

The debate over board renewal is moving into sharper focus in Canada. New public company disclosure requirements demand greater transparency on such things as term limits and other renewal mechanisms, and some large investors are sending the implicit message that companies must renew the board or they will seek to do it instead. The ICD agrees that the composition and renewal of the board are vital processes that demand rigour and analysis and are best undertaken by the board pro-actively.

In the paper Beyond Term Limits: Using Performance Management to Guide Board Renewal we seek to provide a framework for boards to build a renewal process that increases accountability and achieves the right mix of skills and experience to create long-term effectiveness.

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SEC Proposes Proxy Disclosure Rules for Hedging by Directors, Officers and Employees

Steven Rosenblum is a partner in the Corporate Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This post is based on a Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz client memorandum by Mr. Rosenblum, Andrew R. Brownstein, and Sabastian V. Niles.

Pursuant to Section 955 of the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC on February 9, 2015 proposed hedging disclosure rules for public comment and review. These rules, if adopted, would require proxy statements involving the election of directors to disclose whether the company permits employees (including officers), members of the board of directors or their designees to engage in transactions to hedge or offset any decrease in the market value of equity securities that are granted to the employee or board member as compensation or otherwise held, directly or indirectly, by the employee or board member, regardless of source.

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Corporate Risk-Taking and the Decline of Personal Blame

Steven L. Schwarcz is the Stanley A. Star Professor of Law & Business at Duke University School of Law.

Federal agencies and prosecutors are being criticized for seeking so few indictments against individuals in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and its resulting banking failures. This article analyzes why—contrary to a longstanding historical trend—personal liability may be on the decline, and whether agencies and prosecutors should be doing more. The analysis confronts fundamental policy questions concerning changing corporate and social norms. The public and the media perceive the crisis’s harm as a “wrong” caused by excessive risk-taking. But that view can be too simplistic, ignoring the reality that firms must take greater risks to try to innovate and create value in the increasingly competitive and complex global economy. This article examines how law should control that risk-taking and internalize its costs without impeding broader economic progress, focusing on two key elements of that inquiry: the extent to which corporate risk-taking should be regarded as excessive, and the extent to which personal liability should be used to control that excessive risk-taking.

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Securities Class Action Filings—2014 Year in Review

John Gould is senior vice president at Cornerstone Research. This post discusses a Cornerstone Research report by Cornerstone Research and the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, titled “Securities Class Action Filings—2014 Year in Review,” available here.

Number and Size of Filings

  • Plaintiffs filed 170 new federal class action securities cases (filings) in 2014—four more than in 2013. The number of 2014 filings was 10 percent below the historical average of 189 filings observed annually between 1997 and 2013.
  • The total Maximum Dollar Loss (MDL) of filings in 2014 was $215 billion, or 66 percent below the historical annual average of $630 billion. MDL was at its lowest level since 1997.

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SEC Dissemination in a High-Frequency World

The following post comes to us from Douglas Skinner and Sarah Zechman, both of the Accounting Area at the University of Chicago, and Jonathan Rogers of the Accounting Division at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Understanding the mechanics of public dissemination of firm information has become especially critical in a world where trading advantages are now measured in fractions of a second. In our study, Run EDGAR Run: SEC Dissemination in a High-Frequency World, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine the SEC’s process for disseminating insider trading filings. We find that, in the majority of cases, filings are available to private paying subscribers of the SEC feeds before they are posted to the SEC website, with an average private advantage of 10.5 seconds.

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SEC to Review Excluding Conflicting Proxy Proposals under Rule 14a-8

The following post comes to us from Robert B. Schumer, chair of the Corporate Department at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and is based on a Paul Weiss client memorandum.

SEC Chair Mary Jo White has directed the Division of Corporation Finance (“Corporation Finance”) to review its position on Rule 14a-8(i)(9), which allows a company to exclude a shareholder proposal from the company’s proxy materials if it “conflicts” with the company’s own proposal to be submitted to shareholders at the same meeting. As a result of this direction, Corporation Finance will express “no views” on the application of Rule 14a-8(i)(9) this proxy season.

The catalyst for this development was a shareholder proposal submitted by proponent James McRitchie to Whole Foods Market, Inc., requesting that the company adopt “proxy access” procedures generally to allow one or more shareholders owning at least 3% of the company’s voting securities for three or more years to nominate up to 20% of the board of directors via the company’s proxy materials. Whole Foods countered with its own proposal that included significantly different share ownership and holding period thresholds and director nominee caps, but nevertheless was granted no-action relief by Corporation Finance, allowing it to exclude the McRitchie proposal under Rule 14a-8(i)(9) on the basis that it conflicted with Whole Foods’ proposal and the proposals would “present alternative and conflicting decisions for the Company’s shareholders that would likely result in inconsistent and ambiguous results”. Thereafter, Mr. McRitchie, the Council of Institutional Investors and others have called for the SEC to review its position on these “conflicts”, which SEC Chair White has now done. Corporation Finance has since effectively rescinded its no-action relief to Whole Foods and stated that it has no view of Rule 14a-8(i)(9).

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Does Group Affiliation Facilitate Access to External Financing?

The following post comes to us from Ronald Masulis, Peter Pham, and Jason Zein, all of the School of Banking & Finance at the University of New South Wales.

Across the world, difficulties in accessing external equity capital create a serious barrier to the development of new firms. In developed economies, this funding gap is bridged by angel investors and venture capitalists. In emerging economies however, contracting mechanisms and property rights protections are often insufficiently developed to support substantial venture capital activity. As a consequence, little is known about new venture funding in such economies and how external financing constraints are overcome.

In our paper titled “Does Group Affiliation Facilitate Access to External Financing? Evidence from IPOs by Family Business Groups,” which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we investigate a major source of funding support for new firms—namely, internal equity investments by business groups, especially those controlled by families, and how this facilitates access to external equity markets. Our study is motivated by the pervasive nature of business group participation in international initial public offering (IPO) markets around the world: on average, 29 percent of new issue proceeds in each country is attributable to group-affiliated firms. This raises an important question regarding the role that business groups play in assisting new firms seeking to tap public equity markets. It also raises important questions about whether ignoring the existence of business groups creates serious biases in studies of international IPO activity.

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