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Program on Corporate Governance Advisory Board
- Peter Atkins
- David Bell
- Kerry E. Berchem
- Richard Brand
- Daniel Burch
- Paul Choi
- Jesse Cohn
- Arthur B. Crozier Christine Davine
- Renata J. Ferrari
- Andrew Freedman
- Ray Garcia
- Byron Georgiou
- Joseph Hall
- Jason M. Halper William P. Mills
- David Millstone
- Theodore Mirvis
- Philip Richter
- Elina Tetelbaum
- Sebastian Tiller
- Marc Trevino Jonathan Watkins
- Steven J. Williams
HLS Faculty & Senior Fellows
Author Archives: Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
Does Joining the S&P 500 Index Hurt Firms?
For investors wanting to hold common stocks, the best-known investment textbooks show that it is hard to do better than investing in a low cost indexed fund. However, little is known about whether firms benefit from being included in the S&P 500 index. Joining the S&P 500 index can have both positive and negative effects […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Empirical Research, Institutional Investors
Tagged Firm performance, Index funds, Institutional Investors, Market reaction, Peer groups, Repurchases
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Audit Committee Priorities in the Current Quarter and Beyond
Financial reporting during the first quarter of the coronavirus disease 2019 (“COVID-19”) pandemic was challenging for most companies. Reporting for the second quarter promises to be even more so given the prolonged impact of the pandemic. As companies continue to grapple with the implications of managing operations remotely, supplier disruptions, government assistance, and more, audit […]
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Posted in Accounting & Disclosure, Boards of Directors, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Accounting, Audit committee, Audits, Boards of Directors, Compliance and disclosure interpretation, Financial reporting, Risk oversight, Whistleblowers
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Was the Business Roundtable Statement on Corporate Purpose Mostly for Show? – (1) Evidence from Lack of Board Approval
Wednesday of next week marks the first anniversary of the Business Roundtable (BRT) statement on corporate purpose. The statement, which was described by the BRT as “moving away from shareholder primacy,” was heralded by observers as “an important shift… in corporate America” and a “sea change in terms of how the core purpose of business […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Boards of Directors, Corporate Social Responsibility, HLS Research
Tagged Accountability, Boards of Directors, Business Roundtable, Corporate purpose, Corporate Social Responsibility, Managmenet, Program on Corporate Governance, Shareholder value, Stakeholders
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IQ from IP: Simplifying Search in Portfolio Choice
With the proliferation of information signals in both quantity and dimensionality in recent decades, investors face an increasingly complex portfolio choice problem. These forces create a classic signal-to-noise problem, in which an agent must dig through an ever-larger information set to decipher and to create profitable signals. In a Grossman-Stiglitz world, an agent will be […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Empirical Research, Securities Litigation & Enforcement, Securities Regulation
Tagged EDGAR, Fund managers, Information asymmetries, Information environment, Inside information, Insider trading, Investor protection, Mutual funds, Securities enforcement, Securities regulation
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Exercising Business Judgment Through COVID-19
As COVID-19 related restrictions begin to ease, boards and management face unique decisions as to how to return to a new normal amid evolving legal requirements, health guidelines and divergent stakeholder concerns and expectations. A focus on business judgment will assist corporate leaders in making these tough decisions and finding a path to the other side of the […]
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Posted in Accounting & Disclosure, Banking & Financial Institutions, Boards of Directors, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Board oversight, Boards of Directors, Caremark, COVID-19, Fiduciary duties, Managmenet, Risk management, Risk oversight
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Shareholder Complaints Seek to Hold Directors Liable for Lack of Diversity
Earlier this month, three separate shareholder derivative lawsuits were filed in California federal court against the directors and officers of Oracle Corporation, Facebook, Inc., and Qualcomm, Inc., respectively. The three complaints, filed by the same lawyers, contain intentionally provocative allegations that, despite public statements emphasizing the importance of diversity within their respective organizations, the boards and […]
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Posted in Boards of Directors, ESG, Institutional Investors, Practitioner Publications, Securities Litigation & Enforcement
Tagged Board composition, Boards of Directors, Caremark, Derivative suits, Diversity, ESG, Institutional Investors, Shareholder proposals, Shareholder suits, Shareholder voting
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Alibaba: A Case Study of Synthetic Control
Alibaba conducted a record-breaking IPO six years ago on the New York Stock Exchange and is now valued at over $500 billion. The firm, founded by Jack Ma and others, is now the most valuable Asian public company, as well as the world’s largest ecommerce company and seventh most valuable firm. In a paper recently […]
Click here to read the complete postFacing the COVID-19 Challenge in Corporate Boardrooms
Corporate directors applaud their companies’ pandemic response thus far—but the work has only just begun The COVID-19 pandemic and its fallout are testing companies like never before. According to our survey of directors, most board members say executives have done a great job of navigating the challenges thrown at them in the early days of […]
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Posted in Boards of Directors, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Boards of Directors, COVID-19, Human capital, Management, Surveys, Virtual meetings
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ESG and Corporate Purpose in a Disrupted World
Even before the world was disrupted by COVID-19 and current events calling for a greater focus on social justice, corporate America was already at an inflection point with respect to its role in society, facing louder and more widespread calls for businesses to consider a broader range of stakeholders. From the groundswell of support for […]
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Posted in Boards of Directors, ESG, Institutional Investors, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Board composition, Boards of Directors, Corporate purpose, COVID-19, Diversity, ESG, Institutional Investors, Stakeholders, Sustainability
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Blindsided by Social Risk: How Do Companies Survive a Storm of Their Own Making?
We recently published a paper on SSRN, Blindsided by Social Risk: How Do Companies Survive a Storm of Their Own Making?, that examines how companies respond to social risk using a proprietary dataset from Marketing Scenario Analytica. Our concept of risk continues to broaden. Historically, risk managers concerned themselves with strategic, operating, and financial breakdowns […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Boards of Directors, Comparative Corporate Governance & Regulation, Corporate Social Responsibility, Empirical Research, ESG
Tagged Boards of Directors, Corporate culture, Corporate Social Responsibility, ESG, Misconduct, Public perception, Reputation, Risk management, Social capital
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