Author Archives: Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

How Common is a Female CEO-CFO Duo?

General Motors (GM) recently appointed Dhivya Suryadevara as its Chief Financial Officer, effective September 1st. The news made many headlines because, in a position that has long been dominated by men, Suryadevara will be the first female CFO at GM. She joins GM’s current female Chief Executive Officer Mary T. Barra, putting General Motors at […]

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Posted in Accounting & Disclosure, Boards of Directors, Corporate Elections & Voting, Corporate Social Responsibility, Practitioner Publications | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Shareholder Activism: 1H 2018 Developments and Practice Points

1H 2018 Developments (Our data is derived from SharkRepellent and other publicly available sources and reflects global campaigns against US and foreign companies with a market capitalization of more than $500 million.) There was a resurgence in activist campaigns in 1H 2018, after a decrease in 2016-2017. The number of public activist campaigns increased sharply […]

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Corporate Elections & Voting, Institutional Investors, International Corporate Governance & Regulation, Mergers & Acquisitions, Practitioner Publications | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Shareholder Activism: 1H 2018 Developments and Practice Points

The CEO Pay Ratio: Data and Perspectives from the 2018 Proxy Season

It is hard to believe that eight years have passed since the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act (“DFA”) and its many rules intended to regulate executive compensation. Among the most controversial of these rules is the requirement for public filers to disclose in their annual proxy statements the CEO’s total annual compensation, the total annual […]

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Opening Statement at the SEC Open Meeting

Good afternoon. This is an open meeting of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, under the Government in the Sunshine Act. I would like to start by welcoming Commissioner Elad Roisman to his first open meeting as a commissioner. The first and only item on the agenda today is a recommendation from the Division of […]

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Statement on Commission Action Regarding Capital, Margin, and Segregation Requirements for Security-Based Swap Dealers and Major Security-Based Swap Participants and Capital Requirements for Broker-Dealers

I want to join the Chairman in thanking the staff for the hard work that went into this release. In particular, I would like to thank Mike Macchiaroli, Tom McGowan, Randall Roy, Ray Lombardo, Sheila Swartz, Tim Fox, and Valentina Deng from the Division of Trading and Markets. Ten years ago, the U.S. government pledged […]

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Statement at Open Meeting on Re-Opening Comment Period for Capital, Margin, and Segregation Requirements for Security-Based Swap Dealers and Major Security-Based Swap

Thank you, Brett, for your presentation. And I would like to express my thanks to all of the staff who worked on this release. I am happy to see this recommendation come before the Commission for our consideration. In 2013, the Commission explained that it would implement the Title VII regulatory framework in stages, starting […]

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SEC Sanctions Investment Firm for Inadequate Cybersecurity and Identity Theft Prevention Policies

[On September 26, 2018], the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it had settled charges against an Iowa-based broker-dealer and investment adviser stemming from an April 2016 data breach that compromised at least 5,600 customer accounts. The SEC’s cease-and-desist order charges that the firm had deficient cybersecurity and identity theft prevention programs, in violation of the SEC’s Safeguards Rule (Reg S-P) […]

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Were Reports on the Demise of the Universal Proxy Premature?

The specter of the possible imposition of mandatory universal proxy has long been with us. The SEC apparently considered requiring universal proxies back in 1992 and, in 2014, the Council of Institutional Investors filed a rulemaking petition asking the SEC to reform the proxy rules to facilitate the use of universal proxies in proxy contests. Then, in […]

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Weekly Roundup: October 5-11, 2018

The Financial Crisis 10 Years Later: Lessons Learned Posted by Brad Karp, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, on Friday, October 5, 2018 Tags: Banks, Boards of Directors, Executive Compensation, Financial crisis, Financial institutions, Financial regulation, Risk management, Securities regulation, Systemic risk The Effects of Internal Board Networks: Evidence from Closed-End Funds Posted by Matthew Souther (University of Missouri), on Saturday, October 6, 2018 Tags: Board […]

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The Modern Corporation and Private Property Revisited: Gardiner Means and the Administered Price

My paper, The Modern Corporation and Private Property Revisited: Gardiner Means and the Administered Price, prepared for the Berle X conference at Seattle Law School, views the famous book from its junior coauthor’s perspective. It is a project that began with a memory. Back in 1982, the Hoover Institute at Stanford sponsored a conference on […]

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