Sky Blog
The 2026 edition of the annual Chief Legal Officers Survey (“Survey”) from the Association of Corporate Counsel validates the continuing evolution of senior in-house corporate counsel from strictly technical experts to also wise counselors and business partners to management. In …
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our first Committee meeting of the year.[1] I want to start by saying how glad I am that we are able to reconvene (if only virtually) after the government shutdown forced …
A fundamental misconception pervades American law’s engagement with blockchain technology. State legislatures, federal regulators, courts, and private market participants routinely treat the technical capabilities of blockchain systems as sources of legal rights and obligations, collapsing the distinction between what code …
A federal district court in Texas has vacated FTC rules that went into effect last year revising the information parties must submit to the antitrust agencies in merger filings submitted under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act. The vacatur will be stayed …
Legal scholars have long opined on the social benefits of the core securities laws. The chief benefits of issuer-disclosure law and securities-specific fraud law identified to date relate to their positive effects on stock-price accuracy. A price-accuracy theory in support …
On February 6, 2026, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS or the Committee) issued a request for information (RFI) concerning its implementation of the long-awaited Known Investor Program (KIP).
As discussed in our previous client alert…
New leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is making it a priority to reverse the decline in the number of U.S public companies. Its method: reversing regulatory creep and reducing the onerous burdens of compliance that deter all …
On February 4, Judge Alan Albright of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas issued an opinion declaring Texas’ anti-ESG law Senate Bill 13 (“SB 13”) to be unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, due to
“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” This maxim from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic novel, The Leopard, captures the central insight of our new article. In the novel, a Sicilian aristocrat watches …
Takeaways
When a core product feature depends on an external AI model operated by another company, part of the product’s behavior and customer experience is effectively outsourced. That changes what the company can promise customers, what it can test before launch, …
On January 30, 2026, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig announced that Project Crypto—previously an SEC-led initiative—will proceed as a joint effort between the SEC and the CFTC…
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being integrated into mergers and acquisitions (M&A), supporting negotiations, determining the value of the target, drafting relevant contracts – and, most important, helping perform due diligence. Yet, its role in this context raises questions about …
Key Points
Public companies routinely unlock capital by monetizing nontraditional assets. Future receivables are securitized. Intellectual property is pledged as collateral. Long-dated cash flows are sliced, priced, and traded. Even reputational assets increasingly appear – implicitly, if not formally – on corporate …
Let me begin by thanking our hosts at the Texas A&M University School of Law for convening today’s program. Though only in its second year, the symposium has already earned a reputation for rigor and insight. So, to address leading …
Shareholder-rights advocates are mobilizing. The Council of Institutional Investors, representing pension funds with assets under management of approximately $5 trillion, has written to the SEC demanding that the agency resume substantive review of shareholder proposal no-action requests. The International …
A recent decision by the Delaware Court of Chancery in Giuliano v. Grenfell-Gardner, et al. involves a notable twist on the familiar Caremark line of oversight liability cases. After the subject company went into bankruptcy, a bankruptcy trustee gained access …
In a new article, we show that jurisdictions treat crypto-derivatives inconsistently, resulting in a regulatory landscape that raises prudential and investor-protection concerns. This divergence is particularly striking given that crypto-derivatives overwhelmingly replicate traditional derivatives in their contractual structure, payoff …
Fiscal year 2025 was a year of extremes in terms of the number of enforcement actions brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). During the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 (October through December 2024), the SEC reported a …