Sky Blog
In three relatively low profile decisions issued by the Delaware Court of Chancery in February 2013, the court reached seemingly atypical results given the issued involved and the procedural postures of the respective cases. The first decision was on February …
With the recent increase in activism, some on Wall Street are blaming shareholders for the short-term mentality of corporate boards.
But many of these activists represent a small subset of investors in publicly held companies. As a result, corporate boards …
Delaware dominates the corporate chartering market in the U.S—it is the only state that attracts a significant number of out-of-state incorporations. As a result, incorporation decisions are “bimodal,” with public and private firms typically choosing between home-state and Delaware incorporation.…
My new Essay Should Angel-Backed Start-ups Reject Venture Capital? challenges the conventional wisdom that venture capital is a necessary – and even desirable – source of financing for all start-ups. In particular, this Essay argues that some start-ups that attract …
My draft article, Blocking the Ax: Shielding Corporate Counsel from Retaliation as an Alternative to White Collar Hypercriminalization, recommends that the NYSE and Nasdaq amend their corporate governance listing standards to require that termination of a public company’s general …
More and more companies appear with strange abbreviations behind their business name. Consider Chrysler Group LLC (instead of Inc.) or LVMH Montres & Joaillerie France SAS. Some even speak about the “endangered corporate form” and point to the rise of …
A shareholder typically brings a derivative suit on behalf of a corporation against the company’s current or former officers or directors in one of two contexts: either after the shareholder has demanded that the board cause the company to bring …
With the 2013 proxy season now well underway, two recent decisions emphasize the potential litigation risks public companies face under federal and state disclosure law. These decisions highlight the need for companies to focus on disclosure requirements as they prepare …
In the next few months, thousands of public companies will hold their annual shareholder meetings. I would like to take this opportunity to emphasize the importance of robust proxy disclosure to shareholders and to highlight areas in which the disclosure …
The accepted wisdom is that a lawyer who represents herself—by acting as both a lawyer and a director—has a fool for a client. In our working paper, Lawyers and Fools: Lawyer-Directors in Public Corporations, my co-authors, Lubomir Litov and …
My forthcoming article, Interbank Discipline, draws attention to the important role that banks play monitoring and disciplining other banks. To understand the significance of interbank discipline, the Article proposes a new way of thinking about market discipline more generally. …
Poor corporate governance is a pervasive problem in the charitable nonprofit sector. Prominent examples of mismanagement and abuse include instances of intentional misconduct, such as embezzlement and unauthorized self-dealing, and negligent conduct, such as failure to diversify the organization’s investment …
Last week, Professor Robert J. Jackson, Jr. sat down with Bloomberg Law’s Lee Pacchia to discuss his SEC petition to require public companies to disclose their political spending. The SEC has received more than 300,000 comments on the petition, more …
When a business enterprise is confronted with a situation that suggests that there has been a violation of law, the judgments made at the outset may well be critical to the ultimate outcome. Indeed, poor choices concerning how the matter …
Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher delivered the below remarks before the Corporate Directors Forum at the University of San Diego, San Diego, California, on January 29, 2013:
Thank you Anne [Sheehan] for your very kind introduction. I am honored to be …
A committee of law professors that I co-chair with Lucian Bebchuk has petitioned the SEC to develop rules requiring public companies to disclose the use of shareholder money on politics. The petition has received unprecedented support, including comments from more …
William Cary’s opinion for the SEC in In re Cady, Roberts & Co. built the foundation on which the modern law of insider trading rests. Today, we have a stable framework of three distinct legal theories—the classical theory, the misappropriation …
Increasing amounts of communications by and relating to companies are taking place through social media. Broadly defined, social media refers to forms of electronic communication through which users share information, ideas and other content (using text, audio, video and images). …
Since 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court unleashed corporate political spending in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, shareholder advocates have been warning of the dire consequences of secret campaign contributions and demanding that corporations reveal their political spending. …
This is the eighth year that we have provided an annual review of key Delaware corporate and commercial decisions. During 2012, we reviewed and summarized over 200 decisions from Delaware’s Supreme Court and Court of Chancery on corporate and commercial …