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John C. Coffee, Jr.
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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 …
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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 …
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Reputation is crucial for bank investors
The humbling of two global banks in recent weeks has been greeted very differently on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Still, from the perspective of either side, large fines for interest rate rigging by Swiss bank UBS, and money-laundering by …
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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 …
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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 …