Sky Blog
Engaged shareholder voting is often perceived as the linchpin of sound corporate governance. That reputation is well deserved: Even as corporate governance has broadened its sights of late to accommodate a wider set of stakeholders, the pivotal role of shareholders …
First-year law students typically learn that the terms of a contract represent a snapshot of the parties’ mutual intent, captured at the “magic moment” of contract formation. In reality, however, contractual sausage making is far messier than this idealized account …
The transactional plumbing of corporate debt payment systems is hardly where one expects to find watershed legal moments; and it usually lives up to that mundane reputation. But every so often, real disputes emerge, and they are often doozies. Such …
Changes in the global climate are having profound impacts on business operations, governance, and organizational management around the world. Boards of directors are searching for ways to account for these changes as they help guide their organizations, and investors are …
Corporate governance is historically perceived as a specialized, idiosyncratic and somewhat arcane field. But increasingly, it has come to serve as a lightning rod for broader public debates. Perhaps no moment underscores this trend more sharply than the 2020 …
Beyond the extraordinary human toll it continues to exact, the coronavirus has thrown a pall of uncertainty over hundreds of corporate transactions that were signed and waiting to close at the pandemic’s onset. As we noted in our previous Blue …
A folk proverb from the American West teaches that the most important ingredient of a successful rain dance is timing. And the timing couldn’t be worse for signed corporate deals hanging in the balance at the onset of the novel …
Tesla notched a trifecta of (legal) headlines this week, with three inter-related developments coming out of the shareholder challenge to the firm’s 2016 purchase of SolarCity: a settlement, a summary judgment decision, and an almost-certain trial featuring testimony by none …
We write as legal scholars and economists who conduct research and teach in areas of corporate law, securities law, and administrative law. In addition, one of us has previously worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) as a financial …
Of all the conjured hazards faced by the teenage gladiators in the dystopian novel The Hunger Games, the Tracker Jacker (a genetically engineered wasp) was the most deadly and unpredictable when provoked. Dell Technologies Inc. may soon have to …
For the last year, a heated ownership battle has been unfolding between Comcast and 20th Century Fox in their contest to acquire Sky PLC. Sky is Europe’s leading media company and the largest pay-TV broadcaster in the UK, with …
Few research topics over the last two decades have proven as alluring and elusive as corporate governance. Its allure is self-evident: Since the turn of the 21st century, a growing number of pundits, commentators, and scholars have argued that high …
Tax regulators and acquisition sponsors have long been embroiled in a cat and mouse game in the context of corporate inversions—cross-border transactions in which a U.S.-incorporated public corporation is “acquired” by a foreign entity, and the survivor’s locus of incorporation …
Some legal rights and obligations are so venerated and longstanding that they have become virtual absolutes—categorical imperatives that trump other less urgent considerations. But what happens when two such absolutes collide? This was a question that the US District Court …
The following post comes to us from Eric L. Talley, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. It is based on a recent working paper, “Corporate Inversions and the …
The following post reproduces the text of a letter written by a group of corporate law professors at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law in response to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ request for comments …