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Program on Corporate Governance Advisory Board
- William Ackman
- Peter Atkins
- David Bell
- Kerry E. Berchem
- Richard Brand
- Daniel Burch
- Paul Choi
- Jesse Cohn
- Arthur B. Crozier Christine Davine
- Renata J. Ferrari
- John Finley
- Andrew Freedman
- Ray Garcia
- Byron Georgiou
- Joseph Hall
- Jason M. Halper
- Paul Hilal
- Carl Icahn William P. Mills
- David Millstone
- Theodore Mirvis
- Philip Richter
- Elina Tetelbaum
- Sebastian Tiller
- Marc Trevino Jonathan Watkins
- Steven J. Williams
- Daniel Wolf
HLS Faculty & Senior Fellows
Author Archives: Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
Key Considerations for Board and Audit Committee Members
Editor’s Note: Mary Ann Cloyd is leader of the Center for Board Governance at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. This post is based on a PwC’s 2014-2015 Key considerations for board and audit committee members report.
The changing business landscape, technological advances, and significant risks such as cybersecurity continue to present opportunities and challenges for companies today. Directors will want to take a fresh and critical look at their boardroom agenda to ensure it is meeting today’s needs.
PwC’s 2014-2015 edition of Key considerations for board and audit committee members, an annual publication from PwC’s Center for Board Governance, can help enhance the quality of board and management discussions in the coming year.
Here are some highlights:
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Posted in Boards of Directors, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Audit committee, Boards of Directors, Cybersecurity, Engagement, Financial reporting, Risk management, Risk oversight, Shareholder activism
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Limited Commitment and the Financial Value of Corporate Law
Editor’s Note: The following post comes to us from Martijn Cremers, Professor of Finance at the University of Notre Dame, and Simone Sepe of the College of Law at the University of Arizona. 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.
For at least 40 years, a large body of literature has debated the effects of state competition for corporate charters and the value of state corporate laws. The common assumption of these studies is that interstate competition affects the way state corporate laws respond to managerial moral hazard, i.e., the agency problem arising between shareholders and managers out of the separation of ownership from control (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). Nevertheless, scholars have been sharply divided about the importance of interstate competition, and particularly whether interstate competition fosters a “race to the top” that maximizes firm value (Winter, 1977; Easterbrook and Fischel, 1991; Romano, 1985, 1993) or a “race to the bottom” that pushes states to cater to managers at the expense of shareholders (Cary, 1974; Bebchuk, 1992; Bebchuk and Ferrell, 1999, 2001).
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Posted in Academic Research, Comparative Corporate Governance & Regulation, Empirical Research
Tagged Agency model, Delaware articles, Delaware law, Firm valuation, Incorporations, Moral hazard, State law
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Aligning the Interests of Company Executives and Directors with Shareholders
Editor’s Note: 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; 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.
Today [February 9, 2015], the Commission issued proposed rules on Disclosure of Hedging by Employees, Officers and Directors. These congressionally-mandated rules are designed to reveal whether company executive compensation policies are intended to align the executives’ or directors’ interests with shareholders. As required by Section 955 of the Dodd-Frank Act, these proposed rules attempt to accomplish this by adding new paragraph (i) to Item 407 of Regulation S-K, to require companies to disclose whether they permit employees and directors to hedge their companies’ securities.
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Posted in Accounting & Disclosure, Executive Compensation, Practitioner Publications, Regulators Materials, Securities Regulation, Speeches & Testimony
Tagged Compensation disclosure, Equity securities, Equity-based compensation, Executive Compensation, Hedging, Incentives, Management, Pay for performance, Regulation S-K, SEC, SEC rulemaking, Securities regulation, Transparency
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Cybersecurity and Privacy Diligence in a Post-Breach World
Editor’s Note: Paul A. Ferrillo is counsel at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP specializing in complex securities and business litigation. This post is based on a Weil Alert authored by Mr. Ferrillo and Randi Singer; the complete publication, including footnotes, is available here.
“By the time you hear thunder, it’s too late to build the ark.”
— Unknown
In November 2014—just two weeks after Admiral Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, testified to the House Intelligence Committee that certain nation-state actors had the capability of “infiltrating the networks of industrial-control systems, the electronic brains behind infrastructure like the electrical grid, nuclear power plants, air traffic control and subway systems”—Sony Pictures announced it had experienced a major cyber-attack, one many sources believe was likely perpetrated by or on behalf of a nation-state. This destructive cyber-attack was a game-changer for corporate America because it became clear that hackers are not simply focused on credit card numbers or personal information. Indeed, the attack on Sony was designed to steal the Company’s intellectual property, disseminate personal emails of high-ranking executives, and destroy Sony servers and hard drives, rendering them useless.
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Posted in Boards of Directors, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Boards of Directors, Cybersecurity, Risk, Risk management, Risk oversight
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2014 Year-End Review of BSA/AML and Sanctions Developments
Editor’s Note: The following post comes to us from Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell publication by Elizabeth T. Davy, Jared M. Fishman, Eric J. Kadel Jr., and Jennifer L. Sutton; the complete publication is available here.
This post highlights what we believe to be the most significant developments during 2014 for financial institutions with respect to U.S. Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (“BSA/AML”) and U.S. sanctions programs, including sanctions administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), and identifies significant trends. The overarching trend that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future is an intense focus on BSA/AML and sanctions compliance by multiple government agencies, combined with increasing regulatory expectations and significant enforcement actions and penalties.
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Posted in Banking & Financial Institutions, Financial Regulation, International Corporate Governance & Regulation, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Banks, Compliance & ethics, Financial institutions, Financial regulation, International governance, Misconduct, Risk, Risk management, Treasury Department
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Beyond Term Limits: Using Performance Management to Guide Board Renewal
Editor’s Note: The following post comes to us from Stan Magidson, President and CEO of the Institute of Corporate Directors and Chair of the Global Network of Directors Institutes. This post is based on portions of an ICD publication titled Beyond Term Limits: Using Performance Management to Guide Board Renewal; the complete survey is available here.
The debate over board renewal is moving into sharper focus in Canada. New public company disclosure requirements demand greater transparency on such things as term limits and other renewal mechanisms, and some large investors are sending the implicit message that companies must renew the board or they will seek to do it instead. The ICD agrees that the composition and renewal of the board are vital processes that demand rigour and analysis and are best undertaken by the board pro-actively.
In the paper Beyond Term Limits: Using Performance Management to Guide Board Renewal we seek to provide a framework for boards to build a renewal process that increases accountability and achieves the right mix of skills and experience to create long-term effectiveness.
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Posted in Accounting & Disclosure, Boards of Directors, International Corporate Governance & Regulation, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Board composition, Board evaluation, Board independence, Board performance, Board turnover, Boards of Directors, Canada, Corporate culture, Disclosure, Diversity, International governance
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SEC Proposes Proxy Disclosure Rules for Hedging by Directors, Officers and Employees
Editor’s Note: Steven Rosenblum is a partner in the Corporate Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This post is based on a Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz client memorandum by Mr. Rosenblum, Andrew R. Brownstein, and Sabastian V. Niles.
Pursuant to Section 955 of the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC on February 9, 2015 proposed hedging disclosure rules for public comment and review. These rules, if adopted, would require proxy statements involving the election of directors to disclose whether the company permits employees (including officers), members of the board of directors or their designees to engage in transactions to hedge or offset any decrease in the market value of equity securities that are granted to the employee or board member as compensation or otherwise held, directly or indirectly, by the employee or board member, regardless of source.
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Posted in Accounting & Disclosure, Executive Compensation, Practitioner Publications, Securities Regulation
Tagged Compensation disclosure, Disclosure, Dodd-Frank Act, Executive Compensation, Hedging, Proxy disclosure, SEC, SEC rulemaking, Securities regulation
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Corporate Risk-Taking and the Decline of Personal Blame
Editor’s Note: Steven L. Schwarcz is the Stanley A. Star Professor of Law & Business at Duke University School of Law.
Federal agencies and prosecutors are being criticized for seeking so few indictments against individuals in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and its resulting banking failures. This article analyzes why—contrary to a longstanding historical trend—personal liability may be on the decline, and whether agencies and prosecutors should be doing more. The analysis confronts fundamental policy questions concerning changing corporate and social norms. The public and the media perceive the crisis’s harm as a “wrong” caused by excessive risk-taking. But that view can be too simplistic, ignoring the reality that firms must take greater risks to try to innovate and create value in the increasingly competitive and complex global economy. This article examines how law should control that risk-taking and internalize its costs without impeding broader economic progress, focusing on two key elements of that inquiry: the extent to which corporate risk-taking should be regarded as excessive, and the extent to which personal liability should be used to control that excessive risk-taking.
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Posted in Academic Research, Banking & Financial Institutions, Securities Litigation & Enforcement
Tagged Corporate liability, Liability standards, Moral hazard, Risk, Risk-taking, Securities enforcement, Shadow banking, Systemic risk
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Securities Class Action Filings—2014 Year in Review
Editor’s Note: John Gould is senior vice president at Cornerstone Research. This post discusses a Cornerstone Research report by Cornerstone Research and the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, titled “Securities Class Action Filings—2014 Year in Review,” available here.
Number and Size of Filings
- Plaintiffs filed 170 new federal class action securities cases (filings) in 2014—four more than in 2013. The number of 2014 filings was 10 percent below the historical average of 189 filings observed annually between 1997 and 2013.
- The total Maximum Dollar Loss (MDL) of filings in 2014 was $215 billion, or 66 percent below the historical annual average of $630 billion. MDL was at its lowest level since 1997.
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Posted in Mergers & Acquisitions, Practitioner Publications, Securities Litigation & Enforcement
Tagged Class actions, Erica John Fund v. Halliburton, Halliburton, IPOs, Mergers & acquisitions, Securities litigation
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SEC Dissemination in a High-Frequency World
Editor’s Note: The following post comes to us from Douglas Skinner and Sarah Zechman, both of the Accounting Area at the University of Chicago, and Jonathan Rogers of the Accounting Division at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Understanding the mechanics of public dissemination of firm information has become especially critical in a world where trading advantages are now measured in fractions of a second. In our study, Run EDGAR Run: SEC Dissemination in a High-Frequency World, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we examine the SEC’s process for disseminating insider trading filings. We find that, in the majority of cases, filings are available to private paying subscribers of the SEC feeds before they are posted to the SEC website, with an average private advantage of 10.5 seconds.
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Posted in Academic Research, Accounting & Disclosure, Securities Regulation
Tagged Disclosure, EDGAR, Filings, High-frequency trading, Information asymmetries, Information environment, Insider trading, SEC, Securities regulation
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