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HLS Faculty & Senior Fellows
Program on Corporate Governance Advisory Board
- Peter Atkins
- David Bell
- Kerry E. Berchem
- Richard Brand
- Daniel Burch
- Paul Choi
- Jesse Cohn
- Arthur B. Crozier
- Renata J. Ferrari
- Andrew Freedman
- Ray Garcia
- Joseph Hall
- Jason M. Halper William P. Mills
- David Millstone
- Theodore Mirvis
- Philip Richter
- Elina Tetelbaum
- Sebastian Tiller
- Marc Trevino
- Steven J. Williams
Author Archives: Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
The SEC Outlines its Enforcement Agenda
Editor’s Note: The post below by Chairman Schapiro is a transcript of remarks by her to the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, Denver, on April 27, 2009. It’s an honor to be here with you today because in so many ways we share the same goal. We all strive to achieve an “informed […]
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Posted in Financial Crisis, Regulators Materials, Securities Regulation, Speeches & Testimony
Tagged Investor protection, Proxy access, SEC, SEC enforcement
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Inheritance Law and Investment in Family Firms
In my paper Inheritance Law and Investment in Family Firms (co-written with Andrew Ellul and Marco Pagano) which I recently presented at the Law, Economics and Organizations Seminar at Harvard Law School, my co-authors and I investigate whether inheritance laws reduce investment and growth in family firms. Inheritance laws may constrain entrepreneurs to bequeath a […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Empirical Research, International Corporate Governance & Regulation, Legislative & Regulatory Developments
Tagged Entrepreneurs, Small firms
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How Important is Private Enforcement for Corporate Law?
It is often assumed that strong securities markets require good legal protection of minority shareholders. This implies both “good” law — principally corporate and securities law — and enforcement, yet there has been little empirical analysis of enforcement. In our paper entitled Private Enforcement of Corporate Law: An Empirical Comparison of the UK and US, […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Empirical Research, International Corporate Governance & Regulation, Securities Litigation & Enforcement, Securities Regulation
Tagged Minority shareholders, Private enforcement, Securities litigation, UK
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Shenanigan’s Wake
The regulatory oversight framework is broken. The SEC failed to regulate credit default swaps, loosened broker-dealer leverage restrictions at just the wrong time and failed to regulate dark-debt driven hedge fund activities. The Federal Reserve failed to impose reserve requirements on syndicators of collateralized loan or credit obligations. All that will change now. Importantly, in […]
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Posted in Boards of Directors, Financial Crisis, Practitioner Publications
Tagged Boards of Directors, Risk oversight, SEC
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Executive Compensation Under TARP
On Feb. 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). Title VII, Section 7001 of ARRA amends Section 111 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) as enacted Oct. 3, 2008. Section 111 contains restrictions on executive compensation applicable to institutions receiving financial assistance […]
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Corporate governance systems are designed to ensure investors receive a return on their investment. Using cross country analysis, the governance literature has demonstrated that stronger governance systems lead to more efficient allocations of capital resources, which in turn spurs economic growth and increases the likelihood of investors receiving a return. What is less clear is […]
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Posted in Comparative Corporate Governance & Regulation, Empirical Research, Financial Regulation, Legislative & Regulatory Developments
Tagged Firm performance, Governance reform, Investor protection, Transparency
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Shareholder Proxy Access for Director Elections
Shareholder proxy access for the election of directors is about to arrive. Directors of public companies, shareholder activists and shareholders generally soon will be dealing with an important new set of issues and dynamics associated with the election of directors and the management of the board process. This memorandum is intended to provide a briefing […]
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Posted in Boards of Directors, Corporate Elections & Voting, Practitioner Publications, Securities Regulation
Tagged DGCL, DGCL Section 112, Proxy access, Rule 14a-8, SEC, Shareholder nominations
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Recent Developments in D&O Insurance
Federal and state courts have recently issued noteworthy decisions yielding important lessons about directors and officers liability insurance policies. This column examines decisions addressing: (i) the interaction of an application severability clause in a primary policy (addressing to what extent one insured’s knowledge of application misrepresentations can be imputed to other insureds) with a “prior […]
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Posted in Boards of Directors, Practitioner Publications, Securities Litigation & Enforcement, Securities Regulation
Tagged D&O insurance, Lead directors, Securities litigation, Severability
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Public and Private Enforcement of Securities Laws
Public and Private Enforcement of Securities Laws: Resource-Based Evidence, which Howell Jackson and I just revised, is in the pipeline for publication in the Journal of Financial Economics. (We posted an earlier version of Enforcement to this Forum (available here) about a year ago after we presented it at the Law and Economics Seminar here […]
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Posted in Academic Research, Empirical Research, HLS Research, Securities Litigation & Enforcement, Securities Regulation
Tagged Private enforcement, Public enforcement, Securities enforcement, Securities litigation
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