Stock repurchases by issuing corporations have always been controversial. But they have become even more so recently because of the perception that the excess funds used to finance buybacks have come from tax cuts and other sources (such as government …

Gathering additional information is an instinctive response to uncertainty. This behavior is found in many settings, perhaps most pervasively in capital markets. For example, if investors observe an earnings number that differs from what they expected, they might seek to …

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) employs blockchain technology and smart contracts with the goal of enabling perfectly disintermediated financial markets. Despite the far-reaching ambition, DeFi markets are experiencing increasing intermediation recently, as a new type of intermediary, so-called Crypto Funds (henceforth, CFs), …

Dramatic trading in GameStop, AMC, and other “meme stocks” has reignited debates about the efficiency of the stock market, its purposes, and whose interests it should serve. The changing role of retail investors and meme investors, a subset of retail …

The tax law handles many computational issues with extraordinary efficiency. Need to compute employment taxes? The Internal Revenue Code (“Code”) lays out the rate for doing so. Need to ascertain the dollar amount deductible for business mileage expenses? Treasury regulations …

Venture capital (VC) has become an increasingly important asset class for institutional investors such as endowments, pension funds, insurance companies, and sovereign wealth funds, as well as for wealthy individuals. A large amount of money is involved: U.S. VC-backed companies …

Traditionally, high-growth private firms in the United States have used the public equity markets as their primary source of external financing to fund innovation and expansion. For this reason, well-functioning capital markets have been instrumental to the U.S. economy, supporting …

The ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have increased market volatility and even caused markets to close in some countries. These fluctuations substantially affected mutual funds, leading to fire sales of their assets and SEC scrutiny of their risk management. …

The crypto-tokens market has recently emerged as an alternative source of financing for entrepreneurial ventures, with approximately $27 billion raised globally through March 2022.[1] These ventures issue blockchain-based digital “crypto-tokens” to raise external capital through an initial coin offering …

On March 9, 2022, President Biden signed an executive order (“the Order”) requiring federal agencies to submit reports on how cryptocurrencies relate to various issues, including money laundering, investor protection, international cooperation, central bank digital currencies (“CBDC”), and systemic risk. …

Few constituencies benefited more from the election of Joe Biden than the socially-responsible investor community, which saw the most-hostile presidential administration replaced by the most supportive.[1] The point is best illustrated by the departure of Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, …

A SPAC can be understood as an alternative to an IPO, with investors using a large investor, a PIPE, to find out whether the SPAC founder has really chosen a good target or is simply rushing to get a big …