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HLS Faculty & Senior Fellows
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
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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Posted in Academic Research, Banking & Financial Institutions, Financial Regulation
Tagged Banks, Basel Committee, Capital requirements, Credit supply, Financial regulation
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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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Posted in Derivatives, Legislative & Regulatory Developments, Practitioner Publications, Securities Regulation
Tagged Derivatives, Exchange-traded funds, SEC, Securities regulation
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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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Posted in Court Cases, Practitioner Publications
Tagged ERISA, Fiduciary duties, Pension funds, U.S. federal courts
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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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Posted in Practitioner Publications, Securities Regulation
Tagged Filings, FINRA, Private placements, Securities regulation
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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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Posted in Academic Research, Accounting & Disclosure
Tagged Disclosure, Financial reporting, Forecasting, IFRS, Liquidity, Management
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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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Posted in Banking & Financial Institutions, Op-Eds & Opinions
Tagged Banks, Corporate crime, Corporate fraud, Financial institutions, LIBOR
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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 […]
Click here to read the complete post2012 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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Posted in Bankruptcy & Financial Distress, Mergers & Acquisitions, Practitioner Publications, Private Equity
Tagged Distressed companies, Hedge funds, Investment banking, Private equity
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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 […]
Click here to read the complete postFDIC 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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Posted in Banking & Financial Institutions, Bankruptcy & Financial Distress, International Corporate Governance & Regulation, Practitioner Publications
Tagged FDIC, Financial institutions, Recovery & resolution plans, SIFIs, UK
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