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

Compensation Structure and Systemic Risk

Editor’s Note: This post is the written testimony (with footnotes and appendix 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 Structure and Systemic Risk.” The hearing will begin today at 10a.m., and information about it […]

Click here to read the complete post
Posted in Executive Compensation, Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, HLS Research, Legislative & Regulatory Developments, Speeches & Testimony | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Compensation Structure and Systemic Risk

Putting Investors First in Regulatory Reform

Editor’s Note: The post below by Commissioner Aguilar is a transcript of remarks by him at the Compliance Week Annual Conference on June 3, 2009 in Washington, D.C. I am honored to be speaking to a room full of people who spend their days building a culture of compliance. As a former general counsel of […]

Click here to read the complete post
Posted in Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, Regulators Materials, Securities Regulation, Speeches & Testimony | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Putting Investors First in Regulatory Reform

Proposed Changes to Regulation of OTC Derivatives and CDSs

Recently, the House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman Edward J. Markey introduced H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (the “Waxman-Markey Bill” or the “Bill”). The Energy and Commerce Committee approved the Bill on May 21, 2009. Eight other House panels, including Financial Services, have […]

Click here to read the complete post
Posted in Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, Legislative & Regulatory Developments, Practitioner Publications, Securities Regulation | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Proposed Changes to Regulation of OTC Derivatives and CDSs

Regulating Bankers’ Pay

The program on corporate governance just issued our discussion paper, Regulating Bankers’ Pay, and it is available here. The paper seeks to contribute to understanding the role of executive compensation as a possible cause of the current financial crisis, to assessing current legislative and regulatory attempts to discourage bank executives from taking excessive risks, and […]

Click here to read the complete post
Posted in Academic Research, Banking & Financial Institutions, Executive Compensation, Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, HLS Research | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Regulating Bankers’ Pay

Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening?

A central question surrounding the subprime crisis is whether the securitization process reduced the incentives of financial intermediaries to carefully screen borrowers. In our forthcoming Quarterly Journal of Economics paper Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence From Subprime Loans, we empirically examine this issue using a unique dataset on securitized subprime mortgage loan contracts […]

Click here to read the complete post
Posted in Academic Research, Banking & Financial Institutions, Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, Securities Regulation | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Corporate Governance Update: The Forecast On Earnings Guidance

Over the past few years, an increasing number of U.S. public companies have discontinued or modified the practice of issuing quarterly earnings-per-share (EPS) guidance and, in the current financial crisis, this trend has accelerated. A recent survey of 1,300 chief financial officers concluded that “the struggle to produce accurate forecasts now tops the list of […]

Click here to read the complete post
Posted in Accounting & Disclosure, Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, Practitioner Publications | Tagged | Comments Off on Corporate Governance Update: The Forecast On Earnings Guidance

Forum Contributors among the American Lawyer’s Dealmakers of the Year

American Lawyer Magazine recently released its list of the 25 Dealmakers of the Year. Available here, the list identifies individual lawyers who played leading roles in seminal transactions in 2008 that have helped shape the financial regulatory landscape. The list includes four individuals who are contributors to our Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation. […]

Click here to read the complete post
Posted in Mergers & Acquisitions, Program News & Events | Tagged | Comments Off on Forum Contributors among the American Lawyer’s Dealmakers of the Year

Does corporate governance matter in competitive industries?

We examine whether corporate governance has a different effect on a firm’s operating performance in competitive and non-competitive industries in our forthcoming Journal of Financial Economics paper entitled Does corporate governance matter in competitive industries? We use exogenous variation in corporate governance in the form of 30 business combination (BC) laws passed between 1985 and […]

Click here to read the complete post
Posted in Academic Research, Empirical Research, Legislative & Regulatory Developments, Mergers & Acquisitions | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The (Re)regulation of Financial Derivatives

Editor’s Note: This post is by Lynn A. Stout of the UCLA School of Law. The US Congress is currently grappling with the issue of whether and how to regulate the market for financial derivatives. In my testimony before the Senate Committee on Agriculture yesterday (for historical reasons, the Agriculture Committee has jurisdiction over derivatives […]

Click here to read the complete post
Posted in Derivatives, Financial Crisis, Legislative & Regulatory Developments, Securities Regulation | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Will the Bad Economy Lead to Bad Governance?

A tidal wave of anger over the economic climate – what Delaware Chief Justice Myron Steele has called a “populist frenzy” – has created a fertile political environment for recent efforts by three of five SEC Commissioners and Senator Schumer to federalize corporate law under the cloak of shareholder empowerment. Unfortunately for long-term shareholders, and […]

Click here to read the complete post
Posted in Corporate Elections & Voting, Financial Crisis, Practitioner Publications | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Will the Bad Economy Lead to Bad Governance?