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

Equity in LLC Law?

To what extent does equity play a role in limited liability company (“LLC”) law? To what extent do courts retain the judicial discretion “to do right and justice” [1] in circumstances in which the LLC statute and the applicable LLC agreement do not otherwise offer an adequate remedy to an aggrieved LLC member or manager? […]

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Resource Accumulation through Economic Ties

In our new paper, Resource Accumulation through Economic Ties: Evidence from Venture Capital, which was recently published in the Journal of Financial Economics, we develop a robust and generalizable methodology that allows us to separately identify the seeking of similar versus highly or differently endowed partners. We estimate our model in a setting in which […]

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Prioritizing Cybersecurity: Five Questions for Portfolio Company Boards

As the frequency and severity of cyber attacks against global businesses continue to escalate, both companies and their investors are coming to terms with a grim reality: Data breaches, or cyber incidents, are no longer a matter of if but when. Having put to rest rose-colored notions of eliminating this threat, investors are looking to […]

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Creditor Rights, Claims Enforcement, and Bond Returns in Mergers and Acquisitions

The market for corporate control has become increasingly global over the past decades, with cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) now accounting for more than a third of M&A activity worldwide. To date, empirical studies that have investigated the potential cross-country spillovers in governance and legal standards mainly focused on the economic implications for shareholder wealth, […]

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Weekly Roundup: May 13–May 19, 2016

Do Compensation Consultants Have Distinct Styles? Posted by Omesh Kini, Georgia State University, on Friday, May 13, 2016 Tags: Agency costs, Agency model, Behavioral finance, Compensation consultants, Conflicts of interest, Executive Compensation, Incentives, Management, Market efficiency Corporate Litigation and Non-Reliance Provisions Posted by Joseph M. McLaughlin and Yafit Cohn, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, on […]

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Intersection of Deal-Related Indemnification and D&O Advancement

A recent Delaware case highlights potentially unexpected results from the intersection of provisions in a private company purchase agreement relating to advancement of D&O legal expenses and indemnification of a buyer for seller breaches. Purchase agreements in many private company transactions contain some form of two seemingly unrelated provisions: (1) an agreement by the sellers […]

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The Post Dodd-Frank Evolution of the Private Fund Industry

Surveys conducted in the immediate aftermath of the enactment of Title IV of the Dodd-Frank Act suggested that private fund advisers successfully addressed compliance demands associated with the Dodd-Frank Act and absorbed the increased compliance costs of the registration and disclosure rules relatively quickly after registration. Refuting industry concerns over the effects of Title IV […]

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ValueAct, Activism Tactics, and Beneficial Ownership

The filing by the DOJ of a complaint in federal court on April 4, 2016 against ValueAct—claiming that ValueAct’s purchase of shares of two public companies violated the HSR Act’s notification and waiting period requirements and seeking $19 million in civil penalties (based on the $16,000 per day penalty provisions of the HSR Act)—has the […]

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CFPB Proposed Rulemaking on Arbitration Clauses

On May 5, 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a 377-page notice of proposed rulemaking that would prohibit, going forward, banks and a variety of other companies from including in contracts arbitration clauses that would prevent consumers from filing or participating in class-action litigation. According to the press release: “With this contract gotcha, […]

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The Ability of Pre-IPO Companies to Stay Private Longer

On May 3, the SEC approved rule amendments that will make it easier for many private companies to remain private, and easier for some public financial companies to terminate their SEC reporting obligations. With the adoption of these amendments, the SEC has completed the rulemaking mandated by Congress under the JOBS Act of 2012. The […]

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