Yearly Archives: 2015

The Importance of Being Earnest About Liquidity Risk Management

Posted by Luis A. Aguilar, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, on
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
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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 at an open meeting of the SEC; 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.

The fund industry has witnessed substantial changes in recent years, including the rise of novel investment strategies, a growing use of derivatives, and an increased focus on assets that, traditionally, have been less liquid. Unfortunately, it appears that not all funds’ liquidity risk management practices have kept pace with these developments.

Today [September 22, 2015], the Commission considers proposing a set of rules and amendments that will help ensure that open-end investment companies—which include mutual funds and exchange traded funds—manage their liquidity risks in a prudent and responsible manner. The proposed changes will also help attenuate the dilution risks that confront long-term shareholders, and will give investors needed tools to monitor how well funds are managing their liquidity risk. These proposals are important, because they will adapt our decades-old liquidity regime to the fund industry’s new and vastly altered landscape. The proposals we consider today are especially timely, for at least two reasons. First, a study published just last night suggests that U.S. bond funds need to sharpen their methodologies for analyzing the liquidity of their portfolios, because their current methods might be inadequate. And second, a resurgence of volatility in the bond markets in recent months has, in concert with shifting market dynamics, thrust liquidity concerns in that space to the forefront.

These proposals are intended to foster a rigorous and analytically sound approach to liquidity risk management, while also helping investors to better gauge the ability of funds to fulfill redemption obligations.

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Banker Loyalty in Mergers and Acquisitions

Posted by Andrew F. Tuch, Washington University School of Law, on
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
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Andrew F. Tuch is Associate Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law. This post is based on an article authored by Dr. Tuch, and 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.

As recent decisions of the Delaware Court of Chancery illustrate, investment banks can face conflicts of interest in their role as advisors on merger and acquisition (“M&A”) transactions. In a trilogy of recent decisions—Del Monte, [1] El Paso [2] and Rural Metro [3]—the court signaled its concern, making clear that potentially disloyal investment banking conduct may lead to Revlon breaches by corporate directors and even expose bank advisors (“M&A advisors”) themselves to aiding and abetting liability. But the law is developing incrementally, and uncertainty remains as to the proper obligations of M&A advisors and the directors who retain them. For example, are M&A advisors in this context properly regarded as fiduciaries and thus obliged to act loyally toward their clients; gatekeepers, and thus expected to perform a guardian-like function for investors; or simply arm’s length counterparties with no other-regarding duties? [4] The Chancery Court in Rural Metro potentially muddied the waters by labelling M&A advisors as gatekeepers and—in an underappreciated part of its opinion—by also suggesting they act consistently with “established fiduciary norms.” [5]

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New Direction from Delaware on Merger Litigation Settlements

Posted by David A. Katz & William Savitt, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on
Monday, September 28, 2015
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David A. Katz is a partner specializing in the areas of mergers and acquisitions and complex securities transactions at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; William Savitt is a partner in the Litigation Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton memorandum, and 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 a series of rulings culminating in a recent memorandum opinion, the Delaware Court of Chancery has reset the rules for settling merger-related litigation. In re Riverbed Tech. Inc. S’holders Litig., C.A. No. 10484-VCG (Del. Ch. Sept. 17, 2015).

Nearly every public company merger now draws class action litigation, and the great majority of these suits have long been resolved by “disclosure-only” settlements in which the target company makes supplemental disclosures related to the merger in exchange for a broad class-wide release of claims. The only money that changes hands is an award of fees for the plaintiff’s lawyers. In recent bench rulings, members of the Court of Chancery have noted that these settlements seem to provide very little benefit to stockholders and questioned whether plaintiffs and their counsel had investigated their claims sufficiently to justify what some judges call the customary “intergalactic” release of all potential claims relating to a challenged merger.

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The Board’s Prerogative and Mergers

Posted by Clare O’Brien and Rory O’Halloran, Shearman & Sterling LLP, on
Monday, September 28, 2015
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Clare O’Brien and Rory O’Halloran are partners at Shearman & Sterling LLP. This post is based on a Shearman & Sterling client publication by Ms. O’Brien, Mr. O’Halloran, and Gregory Gewirtz. This article first appeared in the July/August 2015 issue of Thomson Reuters’ The M&A Lawyer. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Case Against Board Veto in Corporate Takeovers by Lucian Bebchuk. 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.

Under Delaware law, the board of directors of each company executing a merger agreement is required to adopt a resolution approving the merger agreement and declaring its advisability, [1] although Delaware law also provides that a company may “agree to submit a matter to a vote of its stockholders whether or not the board of directors determines at any time subsequent to approving such matter that such matter is no longer advisable and recommends that the stockholders reject or vote against the matter.” [2] Further, under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, for transactions involving a tender offer or exchange offer, the target is required to file a Tender Offer Solicitation/Recommendation Statement on Schedule 14D-9, disclosing the target board’s position as to whether its stockholders should accept or reject the tender offer or defer making a determination regarding such offer. [3]

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Can Institutional Investors Improve Corporate Governance?

Posted by Craig Doidge, University of Toronto, on
Monday, September 28, 2015
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Craig Doidge is Professor of Finance at the University of Toronto. This post is based on an article authored by Professor Doidge; Alexander Dyck, Professor of Finance at the University of Toronto; Hamed Mahmudi, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Oklahoma; and Aazam Virani, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Arizona.

In our paper, Can Institutional Investors Improve Corporate Governance Through Collective Action?, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine whether a collective action organization of institutional investors can significantly influence firms’ governance choices. Growth in institutional investor ownership over the last few decades puts these investors in the position to have significant influence, particularly if they can work collectively and coordinate their efforts. But we have very limited evidence whether institutional investors are able to overcome the obstacles to collective action. We focus on the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance (CCGG), an organization of institutional investors whose mandate is to promote good governance. We use proprietary data on its private communications and find that its private engagements between owners and independent directors influenced firms’ adoption of majority voting and say-on-pay advisory votes, improved compensation structure and disclosure, and influenced CEO incentive intensity.

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Sustainability Practices 2015

Posted by Matteo Tonello, The Conference Board, Inc., on
Sunday, September 27, 2015
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Matteo Tonello is Managing Director at The Conference Board, Inc. This post relates to Sustainability Practices 2015, an annual benchmarking report authored by Mr. Tonello and Thomas Singer. The complete publication, including footnotes, graphics, and appendices, is available here.

More US companies are aligning sustainability disclosure with global standards through the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework. Even though the overall environmental and social disclosure rate among global companies has remained essentially unchanged over the last year, reporting using the GRI framework continued its rise in the United States, and one out of three large U.S. companies now adopt those guidelines. Exceptional progress has also been made in the transparency of individual practices, such as anti-bribery and climate change.

These are some of the findings from The Conference Board Sustainability Practices Dashboard 2015, a comprehensive database and online benchmarking tool that serves as the foundation for this report. The dashboard captures the most recent disclosure of environmental and social practices by large public companies around the world and segments them by market index, geography, sector, and revenue group. Other key findings from this year’s data include the following:

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Cybersecurity: Enter Insurance Regulators

Posted by Dan Ryan, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, on
Saturday, September 26, 2015
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Dan Ryan is Leader of the Financial Services Advisory Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. This post is based on a PwC publication by Mr. Ryan, Sean Joyce, Chris Joline, Adam Gilbert, Joseph Nocera, and Armen Meyer.

Since issuing its Principles of Effective Cybersecurity last July, [1] the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (“NAIC”) has been making progress in the development of cybersecurity examination manuals. NAIC’s regulatory guidance is intended to help state insurance regulators identify cybersecurity risks and communicate a uniform set of control requirements to insurers, insurance producers, and related regulated entities (collectively, “Insurance Companies”).

Given the priority regulators are placing on cybersecurity (including NAIC’s Cybersecurity Task Force) and the continued occurrence of high profile data breaches, we expect that cybersecurity examinations will commence as early as 2016 and will be performed by insurance regulators as part of their standard three-year exam cycle. While NAIC’s examination manuals will act as guidelines for state regulators, actual regulation will vary by state. Thus, Insurance Companies should be tracking state regulatory developments to ensure that their cybersecurity programs are rigorous and all-encompassing.

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13(d) Reporting Inadequacies in an Era of Speed and Innovation

Posted by David A. Katz, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on
Thursday, September 24, 2015
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David A. Katz is a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz specializing in the areas of mergers and acquisitions and complex securities transactions. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton publication by Mr. Katz and Laura A. McIntosh. The complete publication, including footnotes, is available here. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance 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 Securities and Exchange Commission and other market regulators confront a challenging issue: How to effectively monitor and regulate activity in an environment that is both fast-moving and highly complex? The principles and architecture of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 were created for a much simpler financial world—an analog world—and they struggle to describe and contain the digital world of today. The lightning speed of information flow and trading, the constant innovations in financial products, and the increasing sophistication of active market participants each pose enormous challenges for the SEC; together, even more so. The ongoing controversy over Section 13(d) reporting exemplifies the many challenges facing the SEC in this regard.

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U.S. Enforcement Policy and Foreign Corporations

Posted by John F. Savarese, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on
Thursday, September 24, 2015
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John F. Savarese is a partner in the Litigation Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton firm memorandum by Mr. Savarese, David Gruenstein, Ralph M. Levene, David B. Anders, and Lauren M. Kofke.

We recently reported on a new U.S. Department of Justice policy which expanded expectations for corporate cooperation in white collar investigations. While the initial wave of attention given to the DOJ pronouncement focused on U.S. companies, this new policy is also important for all companies with operations in the U.S. or whose activities otherwise bring them within the long arm of U.S. enforcement jurisdiction. Underscoring the relevance of these new policies to non-U.S. companies, Deputy Attorney General Yates noted in her remarks announcing the new policy that among “the challenges we face in pursuing financial fraud cases against individuals” is the fact that “since virtually all of these corporations operate worldwide, restrictive foreign data privacy laws and a limited ability to compel the testimony of witnesses abroad make it even more challenging to obtain the necessary evidence to bring individuals to justice.”

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Open-End Fund Liquidity Risk Management and Swing Pricing

Posted by Mary Jo White, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, on
Thursday, September 24, 2015
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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 open meeting of the SEC, 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.

The Commission will consider a recommendation of the staff to propose a new rule and amendments designed to strengthen the management of liquidity risks by registered open-end investment companies, including mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (or ETFs).

Regulation of the asset management industry is one of the Commission’s most important responsibilities in furthering our mission to protect investors, maintain orderly markets, and promote capital formation. The Commission oversees registered investment companies with combined assets of approximately $18.8 trillion and registered investment advisers with approximately $67 trillion in regulatory assets under their management. At the end of 2014, 53.2 million households, or 43.3 percent of all U.S. households, owned mutual funds. Fittingly, next Tuesday, we will reflect on our history of regulating funds and advisers at an event to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Investment Company Act and the Investment Advisers Act.

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