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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
- Renata J. Ferrari
- Andrew Freedman
- Ray Garcia
- Joseph Hall
- Jason M. Halper William P. Mills
- David Millstone
- Theodore Mirvis
- Philip Richter
- Elina Tetelbaum
- Sebastian Tiller
- Marc Trevino
- Steven J. Williams
Author Archives: Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
Governance Issues in Spin-Off Transactions
Editor’s Note: The following post comes to us from Stephen I. Glover, Partner and Co-Chair of the Mergers & Acquisitions practice at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and is based on a Gibson Dunn M&A Report by Mr. Glover, Elizabeth Ising, Lori Zyskowski, and Alisa Babitz. The complete publication, including footnotes, is available here.
Spin-off transactions require a focused, intensive planning effort. The deal team must make decisions about how best to allocate businesses, assets and liabilities between the parent and the subsidiary that will be spun-off. It must address complex tax issues, securities law questions and accounting matters, as well as issues related to capital structure, financing and personnel matters. In addition, it must resolve a long list of governance issues, including questions about the composition of the spin-off company board, the importance of mechanisms for dealing with conflicts of interest and the desirability of robust takeover defenses.
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Posted in Boards of Directors, Mergers & Acquisitions, Practitioner Publications, Securities Regulation
Tagged Board independence, Boards of Directors, Charter & bylaws, Forum selection, General governance, Mergers & acquisitions, Shareholder rights, Spinoffs, Subsidiaries, Takeover defenses
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Bondholders and Securities Class Actions
Editor’s Note: The following post comes to us from James Park, Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. Recent work from the Program on Corporate Governance about securities litigation includes: Rethinking Basic by Lucian Bebchuk and Allen Ferrell (discussed on the Forum here) and Negative-Expected-Value Suits by Lucian Bebchuk and Alon Klement.
Prior studies of corporate and securities law litigation have focused almost entirely on cases filed by shareholder plaintiffs. Bondholders are thought to play little role in holding corporations accountable for poor governance that leads to fraud. My article, Bondholders and Securities Class Actions, challenges that conventional view in light of new evidence that bond investors are increasingly recovering losses through securities class actions.
Drawing upon a data set of 1660 securities class actions filed from 1996 through 2005, I find that bondholder involvement in securities class actions is increasing. Bondholder recoveries were rare for the first five years covered by the data set, averaging about 3% of settlements from 1996 through 2000. The rate of bondholder recoveries increased to an average of 8% of settlements from 2001 through 2005. Bondholder recoveries have not only become more frequent, they are disproportionately represented in the largest settlements of securities class actions. For the period covered by the data set, bondholders recovered in 4 of the 5 largest settlements and 19 of the 30 largest settlements.
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Posted in Academic Research, Empirical Research, Securities Litigation & Enforcement
Tagged Bondholders, Class actions, Corporate fraud, Fraud-on-the-Market, Securities fraud, Securities litigation, Settlements
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Why Do Dual-Class Firms Have Staggered Boards?
Editor’s Note: The following post comes to us from Mira Ganor, professor at the University of Texas School of Law. Recent work from the Program on Corporate Governance about staggered boards includes: How Do Staggered Boards Affect Shareholder Value? Evidence from a Natural Experiment (discussed on the Forum here).
The paper, Why Do Dual-Class Firms Have Staggered Boards?, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, identifies a relatively high incidence of the combination of two of the strongest anti-takeover mechanisms: a dual-class capital structure with a staggered board. On its face this combination seems superfluous and redundant. If we already have a dual-class capital structure, why do we need a staggered board?
Even more puzzling are the results of the empirical studies of the combined use of staggered boards and dual class capital structures that find a negative correlation between staggered boards and firm value (as measured by Tobin’s Q) similar to the correlation found in firms with single class capital structures. This statistically significant and economically meaningful correlation persists even when controlling for special cases such as founder firms and family firms. Similarly, there are no significant changes in the results when controlling for effective dual class structures, i.e., dual class structures that grant de jure control and not merely the likelihood of de facto control.
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Posted in Academic Research, Boards of Directors
Tagged Antitakeover, Boards of Directors, Classified boards, Dual-class stock, Entrenchment, Staggered boards, Takeover defenses
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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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