Yearly Archives: 2017

Cybersecurity Must Be High on the Board Agenda

David A. Katz is a partner and Laura A. McIntosh is a consulting attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton publication by Mr. Katz and Ms. McIntosh.

Recent global cyberattacks have rudely reminded corporate America that cybersecurity risk management must be at the top of the board of directors’ corporate governance agenda. Companies have no choice but to prepare proactively, while directors must understand the nature of cybersecurity risk and prioritize its oversight. Preparation, monitoring, emergency response, and disclosure are topics that boards should consider regularly to properly oversee cyber-risk management. Boards should receive periodic updates from management and its expert advisors on the rapidly developing regulatory cybersecurity environment and on the company’s compliance with applicable cybersecurity standards.

READ MORE »

2017 Venture Capital Report

Mick Bain, Peter Buckland, and David D. Gammell are partners at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP. This post is based on a WilmerHale publication.

US Market Review and Outlook

Review

Following record levels of financing activity and proceeds in 2014 and 2015, the venture capital market cooled in 2016, with a decrease in the number of financings and a sharp contraction in valuations. Despite the decline in deal flow, however, the $52.4 billion invested in the US venture capital ecosystem still represented the third-highest annual total since 2000. Once all 2016 deals are accounted for, the number of 2016 venture capital financings should be commensurate with the 4,039 deals in 2013. VC-backed company liquidity activity was mixed in 2016, with the M&A market producing strong levels of acquisition activity and attractive valuations, while the IPO market declined for the second consecutive year to its lowest annual level since 2009.

READ MORE »

M&A Deal Terms in 2017: What Can Deal Teams Expect?

Robbie McLaren and Nick Cline are partners at Latham & Watkins LLP. This post is based on a Latham publication by Mr. McLaren, Mr. Cline, and Catherine Campbell. This post is based on a publication in IFLR’s Mergers and Acquisitions Report 2017.

Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in June 2016, coupled with the election of Donald Trump as US president in November 2016, gave dealmakers plenty of pause for thought last year—but ultimately did little to derail strategic M&A. Encouraged by the post-Brexit decline in the value of sterling and supported by the continuing availability of transaction financing at attractive rates, the number of acquisitions of UK companies by US acquirers reached the highest level in 10 years, with 262 deals valued at US$48 billion closing in 2016.

With attractively priced credit predicted to continue to finance M&A transactions throughout 2017 and foreign buyers continuing to regard the UK and Europe as an attractive investment opportunity, there are strong indications that inbound UK and European M&A activity from the US will continue. In our view, transatlantic deal makers will increasingly encounter the following key deal term differences between the US and UK M&A markets.

READ MORE »

The Origins of Corporate Social Responsibility

Eric C. Chaffee is a professor of law at The University of Toledo College of Law. This post is based on Professor Chaffee’s recent article, forthcoming in the University of Cincinnati Law Review, that was presented as part of symposium hosted on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Modern Enterprise.

The area of corporate social responsibility is awash in rhetoric. Although most corporate managers and business advisors agree that engaging in socially responsible behavior is the correct thing for businesses to do, few can articulate a strong analytical foundation for this belief. The fact that engaging in this type of behavior may help to make corporations more profitable offers a partial reason for undertaking such behavior. However, profit-seeking fails to explain if or why corporations should engage in socially responsible behavior in circumstances in which no financial benefit to the corporation exists or the financial consequences are uncertain. The reason for this confusion over the metes and bounds of the obligation to engage in socially responsible behavior is that the essential nature of the corporate form is not well understood. Once the nature of the corporation comes into focus, the extent of the obligation to engage in socially responsible behavior becomes apparent as well.

READ MORE »

Potential Regulatory Relief—Financial CHOICE Act 2.0

John R. Ellerman is a founding Partner of Pay Governance LLC. The following post is based on a Pay Governance memorandum by Mr. Ellerman.

On May 4, 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee voted to advance the Financial CHOICE (“Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers, and Entrepreneurs”) Act (Version 2.0) to the House of Representatives for further consideration and a vote. The CHOICE Act is designed to rewrite many of the rules and provisions contained in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protect Act (“Dodd-Frank”). The proposed legislation was passed on a party-line vote of 34-26 and has advanced to the full House for a vote at some future date. The legislation is expected to pass the House due to its Republican majority. However, after passage by the House, the bill will be taken up by the U.S. Senate, where a 60-vote majority will be required. To date, Senate Democratic lawmakers have voiced their objections to the CHOICE legislation and have vowed to filibuster.

READ MORE »

Financial Scholars Oppose Eliminating “Orderly Liquidation Authority” As Crisis-Avoidance Restructuring Backstop

Mark Roe is a professor at Harvard Law School This post summarizes the text of a letter by Professor Roe and Professor Jeffrey N. Gordon of Columbia Law School to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House Banking and Judiciary committees and co-signed by more than 100 other academics whose work and teaching deal with bankruptcy and financial regulation. The letter explains why a bankruptcy structure should not be allowed to substitute for the Dodd-Frank Act’s regulator-driven “orderly liquidation authority. The complete letter is available here

Earlier this week, Jeff Gordon and I wrote to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House Banking and Judiciary committees, analyzing reasons why a bankruptcy structure should not be allowed to substitute for the Dodd-Frank Act’s regulator-driven “orderly liquidation authority.” Our letter was joined by more than 100 other academics whose work and teaching deal with bankruptcy and financial regulation.

The Financial CHOICE Act of 2017, H.R. 10, would replace the “Orderly Liquidation Authority” (“OLA”), Title II of Dodd-Frank, with a new bankruptcy procedure, the Financial Institution Bankruptcy Act (“FIBA”), as the exclusive means for addressing the failure of systemically important financial institutions (“SIFIs”). The House Banking committee reported out the bill several weeks ago. A stand-alone version of FIBA has already passed the House.

READ MORE »

Snap and the Rise of No-Vote Common Shares

Ken Bertsch is Executive Director at the Council of Institutional Investors. This post is based on Mr. Bertsch’s recent remarks to the SEC Investor Advisory Committee. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Untenable Case for Perpetual Dual-Class Stock by Lucian Bebchuk and Kobi Kastiel (discussed on the Forum here).

Snap Inc.’s IPO [on March 2, 2017], featuring public shares with no voting rights, appears to be the first no-vote listing at IPO on a U.S. exchange since the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 1940 generally barred multi-class common stock structures with differential voting rights.

Members of the Council of Institutional Investors have watched with rising alarm for the last 30 years as global stock exchanges have engaged in a listing standards race to the bottom. With NYSE-listed Snap’s arrival with “zero” rights for public shareholders, perhaps the bottom has been reached.

READ MORE »

Bank Governance and Systemic Stability: The “Golden Share” Approach

Saule T. Omarova is a Professor at Cornell Law School. This post is based on her recent article, forthcoming in the Alabama Law Review.

The global financial crisis of 2008 has underscored the urgent need for deep rethinking of how financial firms ought to manage risk, and do so not only for the sake of generating good results for themselves and their clients but also for the sake of keeping the entire financial and economic system from collapse. Conceptually, this collective post-crisis “rethinking” effort seems to proceed along two basic lines. Some scholars and policy experts focus on enhanced public regulation and supervision of financial firms and markets—through higher capital standards, mandatory stress testing, greater and faster data collection, etc.—as the key method of minimizing systemic risk. Others, by contrast, see improved private ordering—through strengthening various mechanisms of corporate governance, incentivizing individual firms and their employees to behave ethically, etc.—as the ultimate solution to the same problem.

READ MORE »

Weekly Roundup: May 19–May 25, 2017


More from:

This roundup contains a collection of the posts published on the Forum during the week of May 19–May 25, 2017.






It Pays to Write Well











2017 IPO Report


Lead Plaintiffs and Their Lawyers: Mission Accomplished, or More to Be Done?

Adam C. Pritchard is Frances and George Skestos Professor at University of Michigan Law School; Stephen J. Choi is Murray is Kathleen Bring Professor at New York University Law School. This post is based on their recent paper, forthcoming as a chapter in the Research Handbook on Shareholder Litigation.

In our chapter for the forthcoming Research Handbook on Shareholder Litigation, Lead Plaintiffs and Their Lawyers: Mission Accomplished, or More to Be Done? (to be published by Elgar Publishing) we survey the literature relating to the lead plaintiff provision under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA). Prior to the enactment of the PSLRA in 1995, individual investors served as largely figurehead class representatives. Because class action lawyers typically had a much greater interest in the class recovery than the named class representatives, plaintiffs lacked the incentive to monitor class counsel.

READ MORE »

Page 49 of 83
1 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 83