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

The Impact of Venture Capital Monitoring

It is often argued that venture capital (VC) plays an important role in promoting innovation and growth. Consistent with this belief, governments around the world have pursued a number of policies aimed at fostering local venture capital activity. The goal of these policies has been to replicate the success of regions like Silicon Valley in […]

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Basel Leverage Ratio: No Cover for US Banks

On January 12, 2014 the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (Basel Committee) issued the near final version of its leverage ratio and disclosure guidance (B3LR). The B3LR will be subject to further calibration until 2017 with final implementation expected by January 1, 2018. The B3LR makes a number of significant changes to the Basel Committee’s […]

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ISS QuickScore 2.0

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) has announced the governance factors and other technical specifications underlying its new Governance QuickScore 2.0 product, which ISS will apply to publicly traded companies for the 2014 proxy season. Companies have until 8pm ET on Friday, February 7th to verify the underlying raw data and can submit updates and corrections […]

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Non-Compete Provisions in CEO Contracts

In negotiating the terms of a CEO employment arrangement, arguably the most important term for the board of directors of the employer is the non-competition (or non-compete) provision. A recent study by three business and law school professors (Bishara, N., Martin, K, and Thomas, R., When Do CEOs Have Covenants Not to Compete in Their […]

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Indexing Executive Compensation Contracts

Standard principal-agent theory prescribes that managers should not be compensated on exogenous risks, such as general market movements. Rather, firms should index pay and use contracts that filter exogenous risks (e.g., Holmstrom 1979, 1982; Diamond and Verrecchia 1982). This prescription is intuitive and agrees with common sense: CEOs should receive exceptional pay only for exceptional […]

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White Collar and Regulatory Enforcement Trends in 2014

Last year, in our annual survey (discussed on the Forum here) of the white collar and regulatory enforcement landscape, we noted that the trend toward ever more aggressive prosecutions reflected a “gloomy picture” for large companies facing such investigations. Our assessment remains the same, as the pattern of imposing massive fines and extracting huge financial […]

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CFTC Issues Cross-Border Substituted Compliance Determinations

Just one day in advance of the December 21, 2013 expiration of the CFTC’s exemptive order delaying the applicability of some CFTC swap regulations for non-U.S. swap dealers and foreign branches of U.S. swap dealers, the CFTC approved a series of comparability determinations. These comparability determinations will allow CFTC-registered non-U.S. swap dealers and foreign branches […]

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Canadian Governance Insights from 2013

This third annual edition of Governance Insights presents Davies’ analysis of the corporate governance practices of Canadian public companies over the course of 2013 and the trends and issues that influenced and shaped them. We expect 2014 to be an active year for governance themes with greater calls for diversity on boards, a growing shareholder […]

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Firm Boundaries Matter

Do firm boundaries affect the allocation of resources? This question had spawned significant research in economics since it was raised in Coase (1937). A large body of work has focused on comparing the resource allocation in conglomerates relative to stand-alone firms to shed light on this issue. Theoretically, there are competing views on this aspect. […]

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Considerations for Directors in the 2014 Proxy Season and Beyond

As we begin 2014, calendar-year companies are immersed in preparing for what promises to be another busy proxy season. We continue to see shareholder proposals on many of the same subjects addressed during last proxy season, as discussed in our post recapping shareholder proposal developments in 2013. To help public companies and their boards of […]

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