Sky Blog
The Dodd-Frank Act gave the SEC the authority to adopt, but did not require it to adopt, a uniform fiduciary standard of conduct for both broker-dealers and investment advisers when providing personalized investment advice about securities to retail customers. On …
In the paper, “Management Influence on Investors: Evidence from Shareholder Votes on the Frequency of Say on Pay”, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, my co-author (David Oesch of the University of St. Gallen) and I …
Plaintiffs’ attorneys have continued to bring, or threaten, litigation against U.S. companies following the filing of their annual proxy statements. These complaints generally allege disclosure deficiencies in connection with the approval of equity compensation plans and/or the advisory shareholder “say-on-pay” …
This week, New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli and New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to respond to a petition I co-authored with my colleagues John Coffee, Ronald Gilson and …
In our paper, The Evolution of Shareholder Voting Rights: Separation of Ownership and Consumption, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we show how the ownership patterns of early business corporations shaped their peculiar governance structure. While the …
The following post comes to us from Trevor Norwitz, a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York and a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School:
In the upcoming proxy season, shareholders at several major corporations will be asked …
In a 2010 article in the Texas Law Review entitled “Embattled CEOs”, Professors Marcel Kahan and Ed Rock argued that, over the past decade or so, CEOs of US public companies have gradually been losing power to their boards and …
In Kallick v. SandRidge Energy, Inc., the Delaware Court of Chancery, in an opinion by Chancellor Strine, enjoined the incumbent board of SandRidge Energy, which faced a consent solicitation initiated by a large stockholder seeking to de-stagger and replace …
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. …