Insider Trading Rules Need Rationalization

The current scope of the insider trading prohibition is arbitrary and unrationalized. Both sides in the debate should be able to agree on this, as the current scope is at the same time both underinclusive and overinclusive. On the one hand, if a thief breaks into your office, opens your files, learns material, nonpublic information, and trades on that information, he has neither breached a fiduciary duty nor “feigned fidelity” to the source and is presumably immune from insider trading liability under current law. On the other hand, if an employee of an acquiring firm seeks to test out information about a potential target with a friend at a major investor in the target and that investor later acquires more stock in the target based on that conversation, it is possible under SEC v. Obus that the employee will be deemed to have violated Rule 10b-5 on theory that he made a gift of the information, even though no payment or economic benefit is paid to the alleged tipper. This is considerably grayer behavior than that of the thief. Thus, drawing lines so that the thief escapes liability, while the inquiring employee does not, seems morally incoherent. Nor are such lines doctrinally necessary.
Editor's Tweet | 2 Comments  
Editor's Tweet: Professor John C. Coffee, Jr. discusses the current scope of the insider trading prohibition and how it can be rationalized

Gone With the Wind: Small IPOs, the JOBS Act, and Reality

A dramatic reversal occurred in the capital markets, beginning around 2000, and its causes and implications appear to have been widely misunderstood. From 1980 to 2000, an average of 310 operating companies did initial public offerings (IPOs) each year, but …

Editor's Tweet | 5 Comments  
Editor's Tweet: Professor Coffee discusses small IPOs, the JOBS Act, and reality. He suggests some alternative explanations for the decline of the IPO.

SEC Enforcement: Rhetoric and Reality

On January 14, Robert S. Khuzami and George S. Canellos published their response in the National Law Journal to my earlier column, “SEC Enforcement:  What Has Gone Wrong?”  Their column—“Unfair Claims, Untenable Solution”(available here)—minces no words, but …

Editor's Tweet | 6 Comments  
Editor's Tweet: Professor John Coffee responds to a critique by SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami and Deputy Director George Canellos

SEC enforcement: What has gone wrong?

A disturbingly persistent pattern has emerged in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement cases that involves three key elements: (1) The commission rarely sues individual defendants at large financial institutions, settling instead with the entity only; (2) when it does …

Editor's Tweet | 17 Comments  
Editor's Tweet: Professor John C. Coffee Jr. of Columbia Law School opines on the problem of SEC enforcement. Could the private bar be a solution?

The Political Economy of Dodd-Frank

For a number of years, commentators have noted that securities “reform” legislation seems to be passed only in the wake of major stock market crashes, with this pattern dating back to the South Sea Bubble. Some have argued that this …

Editor's Tweet | 1 Comment  
Editor's Tweet: Professor John C. Coffee, Jr. of Columbia Law School discusses why financial reform tends to be frustrated and systemic risk perpetuated