Sky Blog
Recently, in In re Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. Stockholder Litigation, in an opinion by Vice Chancellor Slights, the Delaware Court of Chancery extended the Kahn v. M&F Worldwide roadmap for invoking business judgment review in controller buyouts to …
There are two starkly different sides to the heated debate over staggered boards. On one are those who argue, based in part on work by Professors Lucian Bebchuk and Alma Cohen, that the staggered board is value decreasing because it …
The Federal Reserve’s proposed supervisory guidance on corporate governance is a breath of fresh air that should encourage banking boards to focus on their core responsibilities and avoid blurring the distinctions between executive and non-executive duties. It is also a …
On 29 August 2017, the UK Government published its response to the green paper on corporate governance reform that it issued at the end of November 2016. It intends to implement its reform proposals — so that they apply to …
A central goal of corporate law is to make managers accountable to shareholders. So it may come as a surprise that America’s federal government frequently compels companies to “effectively exclude the Shareholder from . . . influence over the Corporation’s …
On August 23, 2017, the Second Circuit issued its second significant decision on insider trading liability in the past three years, United States v. Martoma. In its 2014 decision in United States v. Newman, the Second Circuit limited …
The dramatic escalation in enforcement activity by federal agencies against large financial institutions since the financial crisis is well known. These days the latest multi-billion dollar deal between regulators and Wall Street banks has lost blockbuster status and hardly even …
The capstone of regulatory reform in the wake of the financial crisis can be characterized as an effort to change the financial industry by getting bankers to behave more ethically. Regulators have emphasized the importance of “culture” set by a …
Since the June 8 election in Britain, which saw the Prime Minister lose her majority in Parliament, there has been much speculation as to whether the British government would continue down the road of a “hard” Brexit or would move …
On August 3, the Federal Reserve (Fed) proposed for comment a new supervisory rating system to assess the safety and soundness of Large Financial Institutions (LFIs).1 This is the first change to the Fed’s supervisory rating system since the …
In July 2017, Dow Jones, goaded by the reaction to Snapchat having gone public with a class of shares without voting rights, announced that, after extensive consultation, it had decided to henceforth eliminate companies with dual-class shares from its …
Since the CFPB issued its Arbitration Rule in July, most commentators have focused on ways the rule may be blocked from going into effect. Chief among these is the possibility that Congress will vote to overturn the rule under the …
Prominent activist investors such as hedge funds, pension funds, and influential individual shareholders and families increasingly aim to reshape corporate policies and strategy. In our paper “Shareholder Engagement on Environmental, Social, and Governance Performance”, we use a proprietary …
Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) issued two publications relating to initial coin offerings, or “ICOs”: The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy published an investor bulletin1 (the “Investor Bulletin”) highlighting the risks of ICO investing …
Plans to end the long reign of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) as one of the world’s most often-used interest rate benchmarks have recently been confirmed by several top financial regulators. On July 27, 2017, Andrew Bailey, chief executive …
On August 3, the Federal Reserve (Fed) proposed for comment supervisory guidance for boards
of directors of Fed-supervised institutions1 (i.e., Board Effectiveness (BE) guidance). The proposed BE guidance is the result of a multi-year review by the Fed of …
On Wednesday, August 2, 2017, President Donald Trump signed into law the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (the Act). The Act significantly expands and codifies US sanctions targeting Russia, and it adds several measures to the already comprehensive US …
Financial crises and corporate scandals like those involving Enron, Worldcom, or Fannie Mae have triggered increased academic research into the probability of stock price crashes. Stock price crashes have a material impact on investor welfare, and so are of interest …
The S&P Dow Jones and FTSE Russell indices recently took actions designed to exclude companies with multi-class share structures from several of the most prominent market indices.
On July 31, S&P Dow Jones announced that companies with multi-class share structures …