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Program on Corporate Governance Advisory Board
- William Ackman
- Peter Atkins
- David Bell
- Kerry E. Berchem
- Richard Brand
- Daniel Burch
- Paul Choi
- Jesse Cohn
- Arthur B. Crozier Christine Davine
- Renata J. Ferrari
- John Finley
- Andrew Freedman
- Ray Garcia
- Byron Georgiou
- Joseph Hall
- Jason M. Halper
- Paul Hilal
- Carl Icahn William P. Mills
- David Millstone
- Theodore Mirvis
- Philip Richter
- Elina Tetelbaum
- Sebastian Tiller
- Marc Trevino Jonathan Watkins
- Steven J. Williams
- Daniel Wolf
HLS Faculty & Senior Fellows
Author Archives: Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
Corporate Governance at Silicon Valley Companies
As counsel to a wide range of public companies in the high technology and life science industries, primarily based in Silicon Valley and Seattle, Fenwick has collected information on the corporate governance practices of publicly traded companies in order to counsel our clients on best practices and industry norms in corporate governance. We have collected […]
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Posted in Boards of Directors, Comparative Corporate Governance & Regulation, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Board leadership, Boards of Directors, Shareholder activism, Staggered boards, Tech companies
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Do Firms Manipulate Their Stock Prices? Causal Evidence from M&A
Editor’s Note: The following post comes to us from Kenneth Ahern and Denis Sosyura, both of the Department of Finance at the University of Michigan. In the paper, Who Writes the News? Corporate Press Releases During Merger Negotiations, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we show that firms manipulate their stock prices during […]
Click here to read the complete postPost-Crisis Trends in U.S. Executive Pay
Though the global financial crisis of 2008 prompted a seismic shift in attitudes toward executive pay on the part of lawmakers, the public, investors, and other stakeholders, average compensation levels continue to rise or have returned to where they were before the crisis. Mindful of the outcry over particular elements of pay packages, companies began […]
Click here to read the complete postInvesting for the Long Run
Editor’s Note: The following post comes to us from Andrew Ang, Ann F. Kaplan Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, and Knut Kjaer, former founding CEO of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. Long-horizon investors have an edge. Sadly, they too often squander their advantages. That is often caused by shortcomings in their own governance […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Institutional Investors
Tagged CalPERS, Governance standards, Institutional Investors
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Examining the Largest Golden Parachutes
After Jack Welch retired from General Electric it wasn’t until a divorce settlement forced the disclosure of his retirement benefits package that anyone took any notice. At that time, the scandal surrounding Mr. Welch was that his perquisites were valued at $2.5 million a year, and included luxuries such as the use of an $80,000-per-month […]
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Posted in Executive Compensation, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Executive Compensation, GMI, Golden parachutes, Severance
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SEC Dismissal of “Failure to Supervise” Proceeding
In a significant case for legal and compliance professionals at securities firms, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) recently dismissed enforcement proceedings against Theodore W. Urban, former General Counsel of Ferris, Baker Watts, Inc. (“FBW”). [1] The dismissal of the proceedings, by an evenly divided Commission, rendered “of no effect” a prior administrative law […]
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Posted in Court Cases, Practitioner Publications, Securities Litigation & Enforcement
Tagged SEC, SEC enforcement, Securities enforcement
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Registration of Investment Advisory Affiliates
On Jan, 18, 2012, the SEC’s Division of Investment Management issued a no-action letter [1] permitting registered advisers to private funds (“filing advisers”) to include general partners and similar SPVs of their affiliated funds on the filing adviser’s Form ADV. In addition, U.S. filing advisers who have affiliated investment advisory firms which are controlled by, […]
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Posted in Practitioner Publications, Securities Litigation & Enforcement, Securities Regulation
Tagged Filing advisers, Form ADV, No-action letters, Private funds, Registration statements, SEC
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It Pays to Follow the Leader
Financial bidders like private equity firms often compete with corporate bidders for the same target. Over the last 27 years, financial sponsors made 23 percent of all competing bids. In our paper, It Pays to Follow the Leader: Acquiring Targets Picked by Private Equity, forthcoming in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, we examine […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Mergers & Acquisitions, Private Equity
Tagged Bidders, Private equity, Strategic buyers
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Transforming Executive Pay in the UK
The Business Secretary of the British government (“Government”), Vince Cable, recently announced a package of controversial plans in a bid to transform UK executive pay culture [1]. Under a new-four-pronged approach, shareholders would for the first time be given a binding vote on executive pay packages. Executive boards may also need to become more diverse […]
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