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

The Carlyle Group Tries to Bar Investors From Court

As private equity giant Carlyle Group LP prepared to join rivals Blackstone Group LP and KKR & Co. as a publicly traded company this year, it made headlines with a stunningly “shareholder-unfriendly” proposal to eliminate the litigation rights of its future public owners. On January 10, Carlyle amended its registration statement in advance of its […]

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Stakeholder Dialogue in Germany, Italy, and the United States

Consistent with corporate social responsibility (CSR), firms strive to engage stakeholders through various initiatives aimed at fostering dialogue between managers and external stakeholders. Diverse forms of dialogue and broad involvement are critical to the success of stakeholder dialogue (SD) initiatives. This Director Notes describes the results of an international survey on 249 SD initiatives undertaken […]

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Posted in Academic Research, Corporate Social Responsibility, International Corporate Governance & Regulation, Practitioner Publications | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Principles of Corporate Governance 2012

Business Roundtable is recognized as an authoritative voice on matters affecting American business corporations and, as such, has a keen interest in corporate governance. Business Roundtable is an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies with more than $6 trillion in annual revenues and more than 12 million employees. Member companies comprise nearly […]

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Posted in Accounting & Disclosure, Boards of Directors, Executive Compensation, Practitioner Publications | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Anatomy of a Credit Crisis

How important is the role of credit availability in inflating asset prices? And what are the consequences of past greater credit availability when perceived fundamentals turn? In our recent NBER paper, The Anatomy of a Credit Crisis: The Boom and Bust in Farm Land Prices in the United States in the 1920s, my co-author, Rodney Ramcharan, […]

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Steering Financial Institutions Toward the High Road

Editor’s Note: Sarah Bloom Raskin is a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. This post is based on Governor Raskin’s speech at the Graduate School of Banking at Colorado, available here. The views expressed in this post are those of Governor Raskin and do not necessarily reflect those of the […]

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Posted in Banking & Financial Institutions, Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, Speeches & Testimony | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Don’t Discourage Outside Shareholders

Editor’s Note: Lucian Bebchuk is a Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance and Director of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School. The New York Times DealBook published today a piece I wrote, titled Don’t Discourage Outside Shareholders. The piece, available here, focuses on the SEC’s ongoing consideration of a rulemaking petition that […]

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Posted in Corporate Elections & Voting, Op-Eds & Opinions, Program News & Events | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Securities Class Action Filings

Federal securities class action filing activity in the first half of 2012 has decreased compared with 2011. There were 88 filings in the first six months of 2012, down 6 percent from both the first half and second half of 2011. If current trends hold, there will be 176 filings in 2012 by year-end, less […]

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Posted in Academic Research, Court Cases, Mergers & Acquisitions, Practitioner Publications, Securities Litigation & Enforcement | Tagged , | Comments Off on Securities Class Action Filings

IPOs and Innovation

Corporate managers, bankers, and policy makers alike have expressed concerns that the recent dearth of initial public offerings (IPOs) has caused a breakdown in the engine of innovation and growth. In the paper, Does Going Public Affect Innovation?, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, I explore whether the transition to public equity markets indeed […]

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Posted in Academic Research, Comparative Corporate Governance & Regulation, Empirical Research | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

NDA Use Restrictions — Use With Caution

Much attention deservedly has been focused on the recent Delaware Chancery and Supreme Court decisions in the high-profile Vulcan/Martin Marietta case where the courts found that a “use restriction” in a confidentiality agreement (i.e., a provision that limits the recipient’s “use” of the disclosing party’s confidential information to a specified purpose) could in certain circumstances […]

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Posted in Court Cases, Mergers & Acquisitions, Practitioner Publications | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Proxy Access: Upcoming Votes at FRX, MDT and HRB

Editor’s Note: James McRitchie is the publisher of CorpGov.net. Work on proxy access from the Program on Corporate Governance includes Private Ordering and the Proxy Access Debate by Bebchuk and Hirst. As participants in the Forum know, SEC rule changes that took effect in September 2011 once again allow shareowners the right to submit and […]

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Posted in Corporate Elections & Voting, Op-Eds & Opinions, Securities Regulation | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments