Monthly Archives: April 2015

Are Companies Setting Challenging Target Incentive Goals?

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Saturday, April 18, 2015
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The following post comes to us from Pay Governance LLC and is based on a Pay Governance memorandum by Ira Kay, Steve Friedman, Brian Lane, Blaine Martin, and Soren Meischeid.

Do companies set appropriately challenging goals in their incentive plans? How does a compensation committee determine whether management is recommending challenging goals? How important are earnings guidance and analyst expectations in goal setting? Are more challenging goals achieved as frequently as less challenging goals? How much are annual incentive payouts increased by the achievement of incentive goals? How does the stock market react to challenging goals?

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Freedom of Establishment for Companies

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Friday, April 17, 2015
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The following post comes to us from Martin Gelter, Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University.

I recently posted my forthcoming book chapter, Centros, the Freedom of Establishment for Companies, and the Court’s Accidental Vision for Corporate Law (forthcoming in EU Law Stories, Fernanda Nicola & Bill Davies eds., Cambridge University Press 2015) on SSRN.

This chapter attempts to tell a short intellectual history of the debate about free choice in corporate law in the EU. In contrast to the United States, in many EU Member States it was traditionally not permissible to set up a corporation in one Member State in order to run the company with its head office (meaning the center of its actual commercial and financial operations) in another. This changed with three cases of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), namely Centros (1999), Überseering (2002), and Inspire Art (2003). Consequently, EU member states can no longer effectively deny the legal capacity to pseudo-foreign corporations, or apply key provisions of their own corporate law to them. At least in principle, founders can now exercise the freedom of establishment for companies to “pick and choose” the best national legal form.

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2015 Canadian Hostile Take-Over Bid Study

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, April 16, 2015
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The following post comes to us from Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP and is based on the executive summary of a Fasken Martineau study by Aaron J. Atkinson and Bradley A. Freelan, partners in the Mergers & Acquisitions practice at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP. The complete publication is available here.

In Canada, there are numerous ways to acquire a public company; however, a take-over bid made directly to shareholders is the only means by which legal control can be acquired without the consent of the target board. Such an unsolicited (or “hostile”) bid is often used to bypass the board and present an offer directly to shareholders after discussions with the target board have failed, thereby putting the target company “in play”.

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Holding Corporate Officers and Directors Accountable for Failures of Corporate Governance

Posted by June Rhee, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Thursday, April 16, 2015
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The following post comes to us from Greg M. Zipes, a trial attorney with the United States Department of Justice. This post is based on his article Ties that Bind: Codes of Conduct that Require Automatic Reductions to the Pay of Directors, Officers, and Their Advisors for Failures of Corporate Governance that was recently published in the Journal of Business and Securities Law. All comments are in Mr. Zipes’ individual capacity and do not reflect the views of the Department of Justice.

Executives and directors at large corporations rarely face personal liability for failures of oversight that lead to large penalties or losses to their companies. As outlined in my recent article, the American consumer can help provide a solution to this lack of accountability.

I propose that corporate executives and directors sign binding codes of conduct requiring them to uphold specific standards within their corporations. They would agree to specific, transparent reductions in compensation if they fail to live up to these standards. This proposal does not rely on the altruism of these corporate heads to sign. Rather, it assumes that those consumers, dismayed by corporate excesses, will direct at least a portion of their business towards those companies with executives who are willing to put their compensation on the line.

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Optimizing Proxy Communications

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
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The following post comes to us from Ernst & Young LLP, and is based on a publication by the EY Center for Board Matters.

Proxy statements continue to evolve. New disclosure trends are sharpening company messaging to investors, while other disclosure practices leave investors seeking clarification.

To learn what kinds of disclosures are most valuable to investors, EY asked them where they would like to see disclosure enhancements and the kinds of disclosure practices they prefer.

The EY Center for Board Matters recently had conversations with 50 institutional investors, investor associations and advisors on their corporate governance views and priorities.

This post is the third in a series of four posts based on insights gathered from those conversations and previewing the 2015 proxy season. The first post (available here) focused upon board composition; the second (available here) upon shareholder activism. The upcoming final post will focus on the shareholder proposal landscape.

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State Contract Law and Debt Contracts

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
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The following post comes to us from Colleen Honigsberg and Sharon Katz, both of the Accounting Division at Columbia Business School, and Gil Sadka of the Department of Accounting at the University of Texas at Dallas.

In our recent JLE paper, State Contract Law and Debt Contracts, we examine the association between state contract law and debt contracts. A recent stream of papers in finance and economics studies the role debt contracts play in mitigating agency problems between equity and debt holders (for example, Baird and Rasmussen, 2006; Chava and Roberts, 2008; Roberts and Sufi, 2009; Nini, Smith, and Sufi, 2009). This area of literature examines both the contract terms and the implications of covenant violations. While these studies generally treat contract law as a uniform product across states and assume that all contracts are enforced in a similar fashion, in practice lenders and borrowers select the state law that will govern the contract. Because the legal rights of both parties vary depending on the law chosen, the state contract law may be associated with enforcement. To examine this relationship, we first categorize each state’s contract law by whether it is favorable or unfavorable to lenders, and then we examine the characteristics of the contracts and the relevant parties across states. Lastly, we test whether the contract terms, frequency of covenant violations, and repercussions of covenant violations are related to the state contract law.

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Delaware Enacts New Rapid Arbitration Act

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
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The following post comes to us from David J. Berger, partner focusing on corporate governance at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and is based on a WSGR Alert memorandum. 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 Delaware Rapid Arbitration Act (DRAA)—which provides a streamlined arbitration process that will allow for prompt, cost-effective resolution of business disputes—was passed by the Delaware House of Representatives on March 19, 2015, and the Delaware Senate on March 31, 2015, and was signed by Governor Jack Markell on April 3, 2015. The DRAA will become effective on May 4, 2015, and will be codified as new Chapter 58 of Title 10 of the Delaware Code. As summarized in more detail below, the DRAA offers a real alternative to the litigation process, providing companies with the chance to engage in a fast, relatively low-cost dispute resolution process without the burden of extensive discovery. The DRAA may be particularly beneficial to companies that are in commercial relationships with each other and that seek to avoid a lengthy, extensive, and public litigation process.

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Three Practical Steps to Oversee Enterprise Risk Management

Posted by Kobi Kastiel, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
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The following post comes to us from Latham & Watkins LLP, and is based on a Latham publication by Scott Hodgkins, Steven B. Stokdyk, and Joel H. Trotter.

Oversight of enterprise risk management, or ERM, continues to challenge boards and occupy a prominent place on the governance agenda. Effective ERM seeks to balance risk and opportunity while enhancing value-creation opportunities. Proxy advisors may recommend “against” or “withhold” votes against directors of companies that experience a material failure of risk oversight.

A leading ERM framework, developed by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO) of the Treadway Commission, directs boards to:

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Trends in Board of Director Compensation

Posted by Yaron Nili, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, April 13, 2015
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The following post comes to us from Pay Governance LLC and is based on a Pay Governance memorandum by Steve Pakela and John Sinkular.

Over the past 15 years, the methods of compensating non-employee directors have changed in tandem with the risk and workload of being a director. The catalyst for change over this time period includes a variety of regulatory requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd Frank, enhanced proxy disclosure rules and increases in shareholder activism. By way of examples, Audit Committees meet more frequently and must have at least one qualified financial expert, and Compensation Committees have greater workloads. Today’s corporate director needs to dedicate more time to the job, assume greater risk, and meet higher qualification standards. Arguably, these issues, and newer issues such as director tenure limits, have reduced the pool of available individuals who are willing to serve as a director. As with all things impacted by supply and demand, the total compensation provided to directors has increased. Over the past decade, total director remuneration has grown by approximately 5% per year on average.

With the changing role and the increase in total compensation, the design of director compensation programs has changed over time as well. The basic construct of the director compensation arrangement continues to be a mix of cash and equity. However, the means of delivering these two elements has changed rather dramatically over the past decade. Below we review key elements of director compensation programs.

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Intermediation in Private Equity: The Role of Placement Agents

Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on
Monday, April 13, 2015
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The following post comes to us from Matthew Cain, Financial Economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Stephen McKeon of the Department of Finance at the University of Oregon, and Steven Davidoff Solomon, Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.

In light of recent “pay to play” scandals, placement agents have been portrayed in a negative light, using inappropriate influence to gain business from pension funds and other institutional investors. In our paper Intermediation in Private Equity: The Role of Placement Agents, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine the determinants of placement agent usage and implications for performance using a dataset of 32,526 investments in 4,335 private equity funds.

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