Does the Strength of Investor Protection Laws Predict Capital Market Development?

By Nitzan Shilon July 15, 2021 by renholding

Which countries provide the strongest investor protection laws? How are such laws related to the level of capital market development and ownership concentration in public companies? In a series of influential works, La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny (1997, 1998, …

Wachtell Lipton Discusses Important Supreme Court Business Cases Last Term and Next

By John F. Savarese, Kevin S. Schwartz, Sarah K. Eddy, Noah B. Yavitz and Adam L. Goodman July 15, 2021 by renholding

The Supreme Court’s now-concluded October Term 2020 marked a slow return to normalcy following the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Court released only 56 signed opinions — just a handful more than the prior Term, and well below the …

The Role of the External Auditor in Managing Environmental, Social, and Governance Reputation Risk

By Tamara A. Lambert and Bright Asante-Appiah July 14, 2021 by renholding

Companies are under increasing pressure to manage their reputations on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Some companies have lost revenue, gone bankrupt, been boycotted by customers, or otherwise suffered a decline in value because of a negative reputation on …

Skadden Offers a Scorecard on Diversity in the Corporate Boardroom

By Jessie K. Liu, Susan Saltzstein, Lauren Aguiar and Tansy Woan July 14, 2021 by renholding

The social and political disruptions of the past year have heightened the awareness of diversity challenges, including at public and private companies in the U.S. In particular, the representation of women and other diverse individuals in the boardroom is of …

Do Public Financial Statements Influence Venture Capital and Private Equity Financing?

By Brian K. Baik, Natalie Berfeld and Rodrigo S. Verdi July 13, 2021 by renholding

Venture capital and private equity funds are important equity investors in private companies (Hand 2005; Stromberg 2008; Kaplan and Stromberg 2009), and their investments are characterized by an extensive search process that imposes significant upfront costs for the funds (Chen …

Paul Weiss Discusses DOJ and FTC Plan to Review Merger Guidelines

By Joseph J. Bial, Andrew C. Finch, Charles F. (Rick) Rule , Jacqueline P. Rubin and Aidan Synnott July 13, 2021 by renholding

On July 9, President Biden signed a wide-ranging Executive Order on “Promoting Competition in the American Economy” which, among other things, encourages “the Attorney General and the Chair of the FTC . . . to review the horizontal and vertical …

The Evolution of Environmental Discourse in Conference Calls

By Elaine Henry, Xi Jiang, and Andrea Rozario July 12, 2021 by renholding

Climate change disclosure ranks among the priorities of Gary Gensler, the new chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. With the rapid reallocation of capital to green investments – characterized as a “tectonic shift” by BlackRock[1] and a “frenzy” …

Risk and Ambiguity in Turbulent Times

By Menachem Brenner and Yehuda Izhakian July 9, 2021 by renholding

Over the past 50 years, the financial markets have been rocked by major shocks, which have led to the introduction of financial instruments that could cope with uncertainty in general and extreme events in particular. To manage the uncertainty surrounding …

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Global Implications of Manager Disclosure

By Michael Young, Richard B. Evans, Miguel A. Ferreira and Pedro Matos July 8, 2021 by renholding

Delegated asset management, and mutual funds in particular, have become the investment vehicle of choice for retail investors in capital markets worldwide. At the end of 2020, open-end mutual funds had a total of $63 trillion in assets under management …

SEC Chair Calls for Transparency on What Funds Mean by Sustainability and Diversity

By Gary Gensler July 8, 2021 by renholding

Thank you for the kind introduction. I enjoyed chatting with you a couple of weeks ago, Ed, and it’s good to meet with the whole committee for the first time.

I’m grateful for your time and willingness to give us

…

Why “Ramping Up” Merger Enforcement Isn’t So Easy

By Steve Sunshine and Julia York July 7, 2021 by renholding

Antitrust enforcement is garnering headlines everywhere—from Lina Khan taking the helm at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to the recent dismissal of the FTC’s and state attorneys’ general complaints against Facebook. While these headlines reflect a healthy debate about the …

Sullivan & Cromwell Discusses New FDIC Guidance for Specified IDIs’ Resolution Plans

By Rebecca Simmons, Benjamin Weiner and C. Michelle Chen July 7, 2021 by renholding

On June 25, 2021, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation published new guidance for resolution plans to be filed by insured depository institutions with $100 billion or more in total assets. The guidance establishes a three-year filing cycle for these IDIs, …

How Does Private Firm Disclosure Affect Demand for Public Firm Equity?

By Jinhwan Kim and Marcel Olbert July 6, 2021 by renholding

In 2020, over 98 percent of the 40 million firms that disclosed detailed financial statement information worldwide were privately owned. Given their economic importance, the social value (or cost) of regulating private firm disclosures is likely significant, and how much …

When Forum Selection Clauses Bind Non-Signatories

By John F. Coyle and Robin Effron July 2, 2021 by renholding

When a company signs a contract containing a forum selection clause, it is clearly bound by that provision. But what about its parent company? Its subsidiaries? Its affiliates? Are these non-parties likewise bound by the forum selection clause?

The answer …

Do Lawyers Make Good Gatekeepers?

By Sung Hui Kim July 1, 2021 by renholding

Do lawyers report evidence of material violations up-the-ladder at the companies they represent, as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and related regulations require? Have general counsel properly investigated those reports? Can we trust lawyers to be effective gatekeepers and stop corporate misconduct? …

Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses SEC’s Spring 2021 Agenda

By Marc Ponchione, Gregory T. Larkin and Sheena Paul July 1, 2021 by renholding

On June 11, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) released Chair Gary Gensler’s Spring 2021 regulatory agenda, which sets out the short- and long-term regulatory actions that the SEC plans to take.[1] The agenda includes …

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The CLS Blue Sky Blog

Columbia Law School's Blog on Corporations and the Capital Markets

July 2021