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Program on Corporate Governance Advisory Board
- Peter Atkins
- David Bell
- Kerry E. Berchem
- Richard Brand
- Daniel Burch
- Paul Choi
- Jesse Cohn
- Arthur B. Crozier Christine Davine
- Renata J. Ferrari
- Andrew Freedman
- Ray Garcia
- Byron Georgiou
- Joseph Hall
- Jason M. Halper William P. Mills
- David Millstone
- Theodore Mirvis
- Philip Richter
- Elina Tetelbaum
- Sebastian Tiller
- Marc Trevino Jonathan Watkins
- Steven J. Williams
HLS Faculty & Senior Fellows
Author Archives: Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
Why Investment Bankers Should Have (Some) Personal Liability
Commentators on this blog and elsewhere have discussed solutions to problems that caused the most recent financial crisis. A pervasive theme has been the excessive appetite for risk in the banking industry and the impact of compensation on attitudes toward risk. Some commentators have proposed making stock-based compensation more “long term” by requiring bankers to […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Executive Compensation, Financial Crisis
Tagged Corporate liability, Financial crisis
5 Comments
Restoring Trust in Corporate Governance
Editor’s Note: Ben W. Heineman, Jr. is a former GE senior vice president for law and public affairs, a senior fellow at Harvard University’s schools of law and government and trustee of the Committee for Economic Development. This post is based on a Policy Brief by Mr. Heineman published by the Committee for Economic Development, […]
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Posted in Boards of Directors
Tagged Board leadership, Boards of Directors, Financial crisis, Financial regulation, Governance reform
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Financial Strength and Product Market Behavior
Seldom has corporate strategy been turned on its head so quickly. Not long ago, cash holdings were considered a dangerous thing to accumulate and companies that hoarded large cash positions were viewed with a great deal of suspicion. However, the recent market turmoil and the resultant tightening of credit have clearly emphasized the advantage of […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Empirical Research
Tagged Asset tangibility, Cash reserves, Firm valuation, Liquidity
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Supreme Court Strikes Down Restrictions on Corporate Speech
On January 21, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a groundbreaking decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that portions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law banning corporate and union expenditures on political speech violate the First Amendment. The decision also calls into question similar restrictions on corporate speech in two dozen […]
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Posted in Court Cases, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Citizens United v. FEC, Political spending, Supreme Court
1 Comment
The Corporate Consequences of the Supreme Court’s Decision
Last week, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Congressional limit on corporations and labor unions advertising for and against political candidates violates free speech principles. Constitutional law scholars, the media and the public will debate whether corporations are entitled to free speech protections and Congress may revisit campaign contribution limits and public funding. But […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Court Cases, HLS Research, Op-Eds & Opinions
Tagged Citizens United v. FEC, Political spending, SEC
2 Comments
The Harvard Law School Proxy Access Roundtable: The Transcript
The Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance recently released as a working paper the transcript of the Program’s Proxy Access Roundtable, which was held late last year. The working paper containing the transcript is available here. The editors, Lucian Bebchuk and Scott Hirst, have also submitted the transcript to the Securities and Exchange Commission […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Corporate Elections & Voting, HLS Research, Program News & Events
Tagged Proxy access
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CEO Cash Compensation and Poor Firm Performance
In our paper, Is CEO Cash Compensation Punished for Poor Firm Performance?, which was recently accepted for publication in the Accounting Review, we examine the asymmetry in the CEO pay-performance relation. In particular, we examine whether CEO pay is more sensitive to poor stock price performance than to good performance, as claimed by Leone, Wu, […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Empirical Research, Executive Compensation
Tagged Executive Compensation, Executive performance, Stock performance
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Letters of Intent — Ties that Bind?
A recent Delaware bench decision from newly appointed VC Laster on a motion for a temporary restraining order offers a timely reminder of potential pitfalls for parties entering into letters of intent or term sheets (for ease of reference, collectively referred to as LOIs) with the expectation that they merely represent an unenforceable “agreement to […]
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Posted in Court Cases, Legislative & Regulatory Developments, Mergers & Acquisitions, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Delaware cases, Delaware law, Global Assets v. Rubicon, Letters of intent
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Maintaining Board Confidentiality
The increasing success of shareholder activists in designating or electing directors is altering the composition of public company boards. It is also posing challenges to long-held assumptions about the sanctity of board deliberations and the nature of a director’s confidentiality obligations to fellow directors and the company. The almost certain advent of proxy access will […]
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Posted in Boards of Directors, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Confidentiality, Constituency directors, Proxy access
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Compensation in the Financial Industry
Editor’s Note: This post is the written testimony (with footnotes omitted) submitted by Professor Lucian Bebchuk to the Committee on Financial Services, United States House of Representatives. Professor Bebchuk will be testifying today in the hearing on “Compensation in the Financial Industry.” The hearing will begin today at 10 a.m., and information about it and […]
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