Monthly Archives: May 2015

Remarks at the 4th Annual Fixed Income Conference

Posted by Michael S. Piwowar, Commissioner, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, on
Thursday, May 7, 2015
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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 recent remarks at the University of South Carolina and UNC-Charlotte 4th Annual Fixed Income Conference, 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.

This conference is one stop on a bit of a tour I have been on lately, speaking with academics around the country. In each of those conferences, meetings, and other events I have been encouraging increased dialogue between academic researchers and the SEC. Just last month, I spoke to a group of equity market microstructure researchers at the University of Notre Dame, with a message similar to what I intend to share with you today [April 21, 2015]. [1] That message is simple: your work is vital to helping the SEC accomplish its core mission to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.

Given the talent and collective focus of the people in this room, I do not need to recite statistics about the size of the fixed income markets, the degree to which issuers rely on bonds for debt financing, or the pervasiveness of fixed income products from the largest institutional investor portfolios to the smallest retail investor accounts. Suffice it to say that well-functioning fixed income markets are a concern of nearly all participants in our securities markets.

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2015 Spin-Off Guide

Posted by Gregory E. Ostling, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on
Thursday, May 7, 2015
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Gregory E. Ostling is a partner in the Corporate Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This post is based on the introduction to a Wachtell Lipton memorandum; the complete publication, including annexes, is available here.

A spin-off involves the separation of a company’s businesses through the creation of one or more separate, publicly traded companies. Spin-offs have been popular because many investors, boards and managers believe that certain businesses may command higher valuations if owned and managed separately, rather than as part of the same enterprise. An added benefit is that a spin-off can often be accomplished in a manner that is tax-free to both the existing public company (referred to as the parent) and its shareholders. Moreover, robust debt markets have enabled companies to lock in low borrowing costs for the business being separated and monetize a portion of its value. For example, in connection with its $55 billion spin-off from Abbott Laboratories in 2012, AbbVie conducted a $14.7 billion bond offering, which at the time was the largest ever investment- grade corporate bond deal in the United States, at a weighted average interest rate of approximately two percent. Other notable recent spin-offs include Penn National Gaming’s spin-off of its real estate assets into the first-ever casino REIT, Rayonier’s spin-off of its performance fibers division, Energizer Holdings’ planned spin-off of its personal care business, Gannett’s planned spin-off of its publishing business, DuPont’s planned spin-off of its performance chemicals business, Yahoo!’s planned spin-off of its stake in Alibaba, eBay’s planned spin- off of PayPal, HP’s planned separation of its PC and printer business and its enterprise business and W.R. Grace’s planned separation of its construction and packaging business and its catalyst and materials technologies business. There were 204 spin-offs announced in 2014 and 201 in 2013.

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Why Run Away from the Evidence?

Posted by Bernard S. Sharfman, George Mason University School of Business, on
Thursday, May 7, 2015
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Bernard S. Sharfman is an adjunct professor of business law at the George Mason University School of Business. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance about hedge fund activism includes The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism by Lucian Bebchuk, Alon Brav, and Wei Jiang (discussed on the Forum here), The Myth that Insulating Boards Serves Long-Term Value by Lucian Bebchuk (discussed on the Forum here), and The Law and Economics of Blockholder Disclosure by Lucian Bebchuk and Robert J. Jackson Jr. (discussed on the Forum here). An exchange of posts on the empirical evidence on hedge fund activism between Bebchuk, Brav and Jiang, who urged Wachtell Lipton not to run away from the evidence, and Martin Lipton, who responded to their posts, is available on the Forum here.

Back in September 2013, Lucian Bebchuk, Alon Brav and Wei Jiang posted Don’t Run Away from the Evidence: A Reply to Wachtell Lipton on this blog as a means to rebut the criticism they received on an early draft of their empirical study, The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism. In a nutshell, their empirical study found hedge fund activism to create long-term value for both shareholders and the companies they invest in while the lawyers for Wachtell Lipton said the results meant nothing. Based on a recent blog posting by Martin Lipton, the most famous of all the Wachtell partners, Further Recognition of the Adverse Effects of Activist Hedge Funds, the post by Bebchuk, Brav and Jiang did not do anything to change their minds.

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Proposed Rule on Pay Versus Performance

Posted by Kara Stein, U.S. Commissioner, Securities and Exchange Commission, on
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
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Kara M. Stein is a Commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This post is based on Commissioner Stein’s recent public statement, available here. The views expressed in the post are those of Commissioner Stein and do not necessarily reflect those of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the other Commissioners, or the Staff. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance about CEO pay includes Paying for Long-Term Performance (discussed on the Forum here) and the book Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation, both by Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried.

Executive compensation and its relationship to the performance of a company has been an important issue since the first proxy rules were promulgated by the Commission nearly 80 years ago. The first tabular disclosure of executive compensation appeared in 1943, and over the years, the Commission has continued to update and overhaul the presentation and content of compensation disclosures.

Today [April 29, 2015], the Commission, as directed by Congress, takes another important step in modernizing our executive compensation rules by proposing amendments on pay versus performance. [1] Section 953(a) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act directed the Commission to adopt rules requiring public companies to disclose in their proxy materials the relationship between executive compensation actually paid, and the financial performance of the company.

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Restraining Overconfident CEOs Through Improved Governance

Posted by Mark Humphery-Jenner, UNSW Business School, on
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
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Mark Humphery-Jenner is Senior Lecturer at the UNSW Business School. This post is based on the article Restraining overconfident CEOs through improved governance: Evidence from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, authored by Mr. Humphery-Jenner, Suman Banerjee, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of Wyoming, and Vikram Nanda, Professor of Finance at Rutgers University.

In our recent paper, Restraining overconfident CEOs through improved governance: Evidence from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, forthcoming in the Review of Financial Studies, we use the joint passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and changes to the NYSE/NASDAQ listing rules to analyze the impact of improved governance in moderating the behavior of overconfident CEOs. Overconfidence can lead managers to overestimate returns and underestimate risk. The literature suggests that while some CEO overconfidence can benefit shareholders, a highly distorted view of risk-return profiles can destroy shareholder value. An intriguing question is whether there are ways to channel the drive and optimism of highly overconfident CEOs while curbing the extremes of risk-taking and over-investment associated with such overconfidence. We explore such a possibility in this paper. Specifically, we investigate whether appropriate restraints on CEO discretion and the introduction of diverse viewpoints on the board serve to moderate the actions of overconfident CEOs and, in the end, benefit shareholders.

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The SEC as the Whistleblower’s Advocate

Posted by Mary Jo White, Chair, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, on
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
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Mary Jo White is Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This post is based on Chair White’s recent address at the Ray Garrett, Jr. Corporate and Securities Law Institute–Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, Illinois; the full text, including footnotes, is 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.

I am very honored to address the Garrett Institute, one of the most important programs in the country for corporate and securities lawyers, and to be in David’s home territory of Northwestern Law School where he served as Dean before going on to serve as a very distinguished Chairman of the SEC in the late 1980s.

Although the Garrett Institute was established 35 years ago to honor former SEC Chairman Ray Garrett, Jr., I really first came to learn about him when I did a bit of research for a speech I gave in honor of former SEC Commissioner Al Sommer on the importance of the SEC as an independent agency. Mr. Sommer, himself a legendary Commissioner, was recommended by Chairman Garrett to succeed him as Chairman. Seemingly, that did not come to pass because Commissioner Sommer was a Democrat during a Republican administration. That, however, did not stop Chairman Garrett, a Republican, from recommending the person he thought would be the best for the job.

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SEC Broadens Focus on and Requirements for 13D Amendment Disclosure

Posted by Philip Richter, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, on
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
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Philip Richter is co-head of the Mergers and Acquisitions Practice at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP. This post is based on a Fried Frank publication authored by Mr. Richter, Steven Epstein, Abigail Pickering Bomba, and Gail Weinstein. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance about blockholder disclosure includes The Law and Economics of Blockholder Disclosure by Lucian Bebchuk and Robert J. Jackson Jr. (discussed on the Forum here), and Pre-Disclosure Accumulations by Activist Investors: Evidence and Policy by Lucian Bebchuk, Alon Brav, Robert J. Jackson Jr., and Wei Jiang.

The SEC recently announced settlements of charges against insiders relating to three different going private transactions. The settlement orders (the “Orders”) reflect a general increased focus by the SEC on insiders’ compliance with Schedule 13D amendment requirements in connection with going private transactions (and possibly other extraordinary transactions), as well as possibly expanded requirements for disclosure of steps taken during the preliminary stage of consideration of a transaction. The charges were against eight directors, officers or major stockholders for their respective failures to file timely amendments to their Schedule 13D filings to disclose their plans to take the companies private. The charges were based on steps these parties had taken in furtherance of the going private transactions, but that had only been disclosed months (or in some cases years) afterward in the proxy statements or Schedule 13E-3 statements relating to the transactions. READ MORE »

SEC Releases Proposed Rules on Dodd-Frank Pay vs. Performance Disclosure Rule

Posted by Michael J. Segal, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on
Monday, May 4, 2015
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Michael J. Segal is partner in the Executive Compensation and Benefits Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton memorandum by Mr. Segal, Andrea K. Wahlquist, and David E. Kahan.

On April 29, 2015, the SEC released proposed rules under Section 953(a) of the Dodd-Frank Act, regarding required proxy and other information statement disclosure of the relationship between executive compensation actually paid by a company, and the company’s financial performance. The proposed rules are subject to public comments for 60 days following their publication in the Federal Register. The new requirements could become effective as early as the 2016 proxy season.

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Fixing Public Sector Finances: The Accounting and Reporting Lever

Posted by Holger Spamann, Harvard Law School, on
Monday, May 4, 2015
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Holger Spamann is an assistant professor at Harvard Law School. This post is based on the article Fixing Public Sector Finances: The Accounting and Reporting Lever recently published in the UCLA Law Review and co-authored by Professor Spamann and James Naughton of Kellogg School of Management.

Detroit’s bankruptcy highlighted the precarious financial situation of many states, cities, and other localities (collectively referred to as municipalities). In an article just published in the UCLA Law Review, we argue that part of the blame for this situation lies with the outdated and ineffective financial reporting regime for public entities and that fixing this regime is a necessary first step toward fiscal recovery. We provide concrete examples of advisable changes in accounting rules and advocate for institutional changes, particularly involvement of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

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How United States v. Newman Changes The Law

Posted by Jon Eisenberg, K&L Gates LLP, on
Sunday, May 3, 2015
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Jon N. Eisenberg is partner in the Government Enforcement practice at K&L Gates LLP. This post is based on a K&L Gates publication by Mr. Eisenberg. The complete publication, including footnotes, is available here.

In unsuccessfully seeking rehearing in United States v. Newman, 773 F.3d 438 (2d Cir. 2014), reh’g denied, Nos. 13-1837, 13-1917 (2d Cir. Apr. 3, 2015), the Government acknowledged that the Second Circuit’s recent decision in Newman “will dramatically limit the Government’s ability to prosecute some of the most common, culpable, and market-threatening forms of insider trading,” and “arguably represents one of the most significant developments in insider trading law in a generation.” As we discuss below, Newman is a well-deserved generational setback for the Government. It reflects the Second Circuit’s reasonable reaction to Government overreach, and it establishes brighter lines to cabin prosecutorial and SEC discretion in bringing future criminal and civil insider trading actions.

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