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

D.C. Circuit Adopts Expansive Meaning of Underwriter

In Zacharias v. SEC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed an SEC order finding that two officers and directors of a public company and an unaffiliated third party engaged in a “scheme” to sell securities in violation of the registration requirement of Section 5 of the Securities Act, despite […]

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Paying for Performance at Goldman

Editor’s Note: This post is based on an op-ed piece by Lucian Bebchuk published today on Wall Street Journal online and available here. Last week, after reporting stellar second-quarter profit of $3.4 billion, Goldman announced the setting aside of $11.4 billion for compensation – which, broken down per employee, is similar to what Goldman set […]

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A critique of the President’s financial regulation reforms

Editor’s Note: This post is the first part of a two-part series by Richard A. Posner, and is based on a recent article in Lombard Street. On June 17, the Treasury Department issued an 88-page report entitled Financial Regulatory Reform: A New Foundation: Rebuilding Financial Supervision and Regulation. The Report (as I’ll call it) is […]

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Administration Proposes Regulations for Private Fund Investment Advisers

On July 15, 2009, the Obama administration (the “Administration”) delivered to Congress draft legislation, the Private Fund Investment Advisers Registration Act of 2009. Under the proposed legislation, managers of most hedge funds, private equity funds and venture capital funds in the U.S. would be required to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) […]

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Posted in Financial Regulation, Legislative & Regulatory Developments, Practitioner Publications, Securities Regulation | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Shareholder Lawsuits and Stock Returns

In our forthcoming Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis paper, Shareholder Initiated Class Action Lawsuits: Shareholder Wealth Effects and Industry Spillovers, we analyze shareholder initiated class action lawsuits and the associated stock price reaction. Our analysis uses a comprehensive sample obtained from the Securities Class Action Lawsuit Clearinghouse (see here) at Stanford University (which tracks […]

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What Happens When The Government Enters The Ring?

Editor’s Note: This post by Professor Mark Roe appears today on Forbes.com Bernanke and Paulson are still taking heat from Congress for pressing Bank of America’s Lewis into going forward with the Merrill Lynch purchase, a deal that shackled Bank of America with significant losses. And Bank of America’s Lewis took considerable heat from its […]

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Posted in Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, HLS Research, Op-Eds & Opinions | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Why re-regulating derivatives can prevent another disaster

Editor’s Note: This post is by Lynn A. Stout of UCLA School of Law. When credit markets froze up in the fall of 2008, many economists pronounced the crisis both inexplicable and unforeseeable. That’s because they were economists, not lawyers. Lawyers who specialize in financial regulation, and especially the small cadre who specialize in derivatives […]

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Posted in Banking & Financial Institutions, Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, Legislative & Regulatory Developments, Op-Eds & Opinions, Securities Regulation | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Cuban Decision Casts Doubt on SEC Position on Insider Trading

On Friday, a federal district court in the Northern District of Texas dismissed the SEC’s insider trading case against Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. While the celebrity of the defendant has undoubtedly contributed to the widespread publicity of the dismissal, the real news is that the SEC has, for the moment at least, lost a […]

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Corporate Governance in Crisis Times

Since the apex of the economic crisis last year, American companies have been buried in an avalanche of corporate governance initiatives designed to increase the power of fund managers to dictate corporate policies to boards of directors. Unfortunately, few, if any, of the proposals focus on what must be the overriding objective of corporate governance—encouraging […]

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, International Corporate Governance & Regulation, Legislative & Regulatory Developments, Practitioner Publications, Securities Regulation | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Financial Integration, Investment, and Economic Growth

In our forthcoming The Review of Economics and Statistics paper: Financial Integration, Investment, and Economic Growth. Evidence from Two Eras of Financial Globalization, we turn to the economic history of the first era of financial globalization (1880-1914) for new insights into whether international financial integration boosts economic growth. We rely on models and techniques employed […]

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Posted in Academic Research, Comparative Corporate Governance & Regulation, Empirical Research, Financial Regulation, International Corporate Governance & Regulation | Tagged | 1 Comment