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

The Procyclical Effects of Bank Capital Regulation

The basic argument about the procyclical effects of bank capital requirements is well-known. In recessions, losses erode banks’ capital, while risk-based capital requirements, such as those in Basel II, become higher. If banks cannot quickly raise sufficient new capital, their lending capacity falls and a credit crunch may follow. Yet, correcting the potential contractionary effect […]

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SEC and Actively Managed Exchange Traded Funds

Nearly three years after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) effectively froze the creation of actively managed and leveraged exchange traded funds (“ETFs”) that utilize options, futures, swaps, and other derivatives as part of their investment strategies, the SEC has lifted the moratorium on the use of derivatives by actively managed funds while continuing […]

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Court Rejects ERISA Challenge to Pension De-Risking Transaction

For many employers, underfunded defined benefit pension plans present significant ongoing challenges. These challenges arise not only because of the underfunding itself, but also because of the significant volatility that the underfunding can create on its balance sheet due to changes in interest rates and other key assumptions over time. An employer has always had […]

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FINRA Issues Guidance for Private Placement Filings

On December 3, 2012, FINRA’s new Rule 5123 went into effect. [1] The Rule requires members selling securities issued by non-members in a private placement to file the private placement memorandum, term sheet or other offering documents with FINRA within 15 days of the date of the first sale of securities, or indicate that there […]

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Mandatory Financial Reporting Environment and Voluntary Disclosure

In the paper, Mandatory Financial Reporting Environment and Voluntary Disclosure: Evidence from Mandatory IFRS Adoption, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we investigate the interaction between mandatory financial reporting environment and voluntary disclosure by employing the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2005 as an exogenous increase to mandatory reporting […]

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Why Are Some Sectors (Ahem, Finance) So Scandal-Plagued?

Editor’s Note: Ben W. Heineman, Jr. is a former GE senior vice president for law and public affairs and a senior fellow at Harvard University’s schools of law and government. This post is based on an article that appeared in the Harvard Business Review online. In the past 25 years, the size of settlements, fines […]

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Corporate Tax Reform

Editor’s Note: Robert Pozen is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. This post is based on a Tax Notes article written by Mr. Pozen and Lucas W. Goodman, titled “Capping the Deductibility of Corporate Interest Expense,” available here. Amid the current debate over tax policy in […]

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Posted in Accounting & Disclosure, Banking & Financial Institutions, Bankruptcy & Financial Distress, Op-Eds & Opinions | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

2012 Distressed Investing M&A Report

Schulte Roth & Zabel is pleased to present Distressed Investing M&A, published in association with mergermarket and Debtwire. Based on a series of interviews with investment bankers, private equity practitioners and hedge fund investors in the US, this report examines the market for distressed assets at home and abroad. Economic uncertainty brought on by the […]

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SEC to Propose Rules on Corporate Political Spending by April 2013

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently updated its entry in the Office of Management and Budget’s Unified Agenda to indicate that, by April, it plans to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on requiring public companies to disclose their spending on politics. Although the Director and Deputy Director of the Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance […]

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FDIC and Bank of England Release White Paper

On December 10, 2012, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) and the Bank of England released a white paper, Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions, [1] describing how each would resolve a materially distressed or failing financial institution that is globally active and systemically important (“G-SIFI”) in order to maintain the G-SIFI’s ongoing and […]

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