Sky Blog
The 2013 proxy season saw a continuance of the high and increasing level of activist campaigns experienced during the last ten years. There have been more than 300 activist attacks on major companies during this period. No company is too …
We often get called into corporate calamities where “heavy water” is starting to overwhelm the bilge pump of the corporate yacht. Often in those situations good people like directors and officers, who are tasked with figuring out what to do …
The following post comes from remarks delivered by SEC Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher at the European Corporate Governance & Company Law Conference in Dublin, Ireland on May 17, 2013.
Thank you Danny [McCoy] for your very kind introduction. I am …
The newly amended credit rating agencies regulation coming into force on 20 June will expand the scope and application of disclosure requirements and other ratings related regulation for structured finance instruments – a concept wide enough to include many transactions
The Supreme Court recently granted certiorari to decide whether the whistleblower protections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), 18 U.S.C. § 1514A, extend to employees of privately held contractors or subcontractors of a public company. The case, Lawson v. FMR,…
In an article just published in the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, I argue that Delaware’s implied-consent-to-jurisdiction statute is unconstitutional. That statute, Section 3114, is routinely invoked to assert personal jurisdiction over virtually every nonresident director and officer defendant in …
If Aesop were still in the fable-writing business, and he had been watching the last three years of Dodd-Frank Act rulemaking, we would probably be reading the Snail and the Tortoise to our kids. In this issue of Dodd-Frank at …
On May 29, 2013, Chancellor Leo E. Strine, Jr. of the Delaware Court of Chancery issued an important decision that lays the foundation for controlling stockholders to pursue going-private merger transactions with the comfort that, if certain conditions are met, …
The Delaware Court of Chancery this week held that the use of both an independent special committee and a majority-of-the-minority vote condition in a go-private merger between a controlled company and its controlling stockholder will result in application of the …
The CLS Blue Sky Blog presents its first installment of our new series, entitled “The Marketplace of Ideas.” The intent is to present different perspectives on the same subject by two or more authors.
Today, Professor John C. Coffee, Jr. …
In a free-swinging and provocative attack, Brandon Gold, a graduating Harvard Law School student, argues (1) that third party bonuses, paid by hedge funds or others soliciting proxies, to their director nominees are acceptable and even desirable, and (2) that …
The following post comes to us from Brandon S. Gold, a fellow in the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance. Beginning in the Fall, Brandon will be an associate with Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP.
In a recent memorandum …
The following post comes to us from David A. Katz, a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and Laura A. McIntosh, a consulting attorney for the firm. The views expressed are the authors’ and do not necessarily represent the …
This Tuesday, May 21, shareholders at JP Morgan Chase & Co. (“JPMorgan”) will vote on whether the bank should separate the roles of chairman and CEO. Currently, Jamie Dimon holds both titles. The impending vote is not binding on the …
As annual meeting season approaches, so too does the first deadline for companies listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market (Nasdaq) to comply with amended compensation committee rules. Traditionally, evaluation of director independence of Nasdaq-listed companies differed for purposes of serving …
China now has the second-largest number of Fortune Global 500 companies in the world. Most of the Chinese companies on the list are state-owned enterprises (sometimes called “SOEs”) organized into massive corporate groups with a central government agency as their …
This year, the practice of activist hedge funds engaged in proxy contests offering special compensation schemes to their dissident director nominees has increased and become even more egregious. While the terms of these schemes vary, the general thrust is that, …
The following post comes to us from Professor Mariana Pargendler of the Fundação Getulio Vargas School of Law at São Paulo, Brazil.
Despite prior waves of privatization, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) remain a fixture of the variety of capitalism embraced by …
The Institute For The Fiduciary Standard, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., has created a prize—to be known as the Tamar Frankel Fiduciary Prize—which will be awarded annually to a person who has made a “significant contribution to the …
Equity ownership in the United States no longer reflects the dispersed share ownership of the canonical Berle-Means firm. Instead, in our new working paper, The Agency Costs of Agency Capital: Activist Investors and the Revaluation of Governance Rights, Ron …