Sky Blog
A trio of opinions from the Delaware Supreme Court, each authored by Chief Justice Leo E. Strine, Jr., has reaffirmed Delaware’s deference to the business judgment of disinterested corporate decision-makers and restored important protections for directors that had been weakened …
All partnerships will be audited at the entity level unless they have 100 or fewer partners and no partnerships as direct partners.
The two-year budget plan passed by Congress on October 30, 2015, and expected to be signed into law …
The last decade has seen a dramatic shift away from stock options and in favor of performance-based equity or “performance shares” in senior executive packages at large US public companies. Once accounting for over 60% of ex ante executive pay …
In case you are wondering – no, this is not about making the closing more festive, or planning for a champagne celebration after the closing.
As companies think about the timing of the closing, several key drivers are leading both …
On October 26, 2015, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (“ISS”) issued key proposed changes to its policies, inviting all interested parties to provide comment.[1] ISS will accept comments through November 9, 2015 at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. If adopted, ISS’s …
Benefit corporations are a hot new innovation in corporate law. In just a few years over half of the states have adopted benefit corporation statutes, aiming to provide a form of business association adapted to social enterprises which blend profit-making …
The SEC settled charges with two investment advisers to a closed-end fund based on allegations that the advisers failed to adequately disclose a change in investment strategy to the fund’s board and its investors. The SEC also found that shareholder …
Proxy access grants shareholders the right to place their director nominees on corporate proxy materials. The Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) has been trying to regulate proxy access for almost 70 years since 1942. The most recent SEC regulations …
In order to retain their access to large scale capital at low cost, there is no question that companies need to actively manage their compliance with the ever-increasing regulatory requirements in the United States pertaining to corporate disclosure. Managing this …
Is a CEO’s statement that “I believe the TVs we manufacture have the highest resolution on the market” potentially actionable as an “untrue statement of material fact” under § 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder? …
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (the “Board”) recently issued two exposure drafts that recommend a series of amendments related to determinations of materiality.1 These efforts form part of the Board’s ongoing disclosure framework project, an initiative dedicated to improving …
In their influential 1984 article The Mechanisms of Market Efficiency[1], Ron Gilson and Reinier Kraakman put forward a causal framework for understanding how new information becomes incorporated into the price of publicly-traded equity securities. This framework was grounded …
Yesterday [October 22, 2015], the Staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance issued Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14H. SLB14H formally narrows the long-standing approach to interpreting Rule 14a-8(i)(9), which permits a company to exclude a …
Today, we host two pieces debating the potential for firm disclosed insider trading to occur without harm to the company, its investors and other market participants. John P. Anderson, Associate Professor, Mississippi College School of Law, proposes that under some …
Professor John P. Anderson’s article, What’s the Harm in Issuer-Licensed Insider Trading [1] argues that my “Law of Conservation of Securities” has no moral relevance to the question whether to allow such trading.
A stock market insider trade has two …
I have argued that insider trading is morally harmless where the issuer approves the trade in advance and makes certain ex ante and ex post public disclosures.[1] I have also suggested that reforming the law to permit such issuer-licensed …
The subject of “proxy access” represents another turning point in the corporate governance of public companies that many boards of directors will need to face, and for some, much sooner than later. Proxy access, which has come to the forefront …
Any successful fraudster can tell you the golden rule of his trade: if no one notices your fraud, keep doing it. The possibility to repeat past success makes fraud very costly: for example, health care fraud accounts for one to …
With recent stock market volatility and sharp drops in stock market prices coupled with the continuing low interest rate environment, management and boards of directors of companies with significant net operating loss carryforwards (NOLs) may want to consider taking steps …
As reflected in the title of the new memoir by Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath, Bernanke clearly believes that he and other Fed policymakers demonstrated exceptional …