Sky Blog
It has become common in Britain to argue about whether those who forcefully suggested that a vote to leave the EU would have a very negative effect on the UK economy were wide of the mark. This argument may be …
Innovation is perhaps the single most important driver of productivity and growth. However, firms do not innovate in isolation but rather within an ecosystem of their technological peers, as many classic studies show. More recent work finds that a given …
June 2018 will mark the 60th anniversary of the publication of Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller’s classic article, The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance, and the Theory of Investment. Widely hailed as the foundation of modern finance, their …
In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of firms opting to either forgo the public equity market or exit the market in favor of private financing.[1] Increasingly, financing for private firms comes from private funds, …
On December 27, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB” or “Bureau”) released its biennial report on the consumer credit card market (“2017 Report” or “Report”), which summarizes its views on the state of the consumer credit card market over the …
Corporate inversions have captured the imagination of the public and the popular press as well as that of the academic community. The idea is that a little paperwork can convert a U.S. corporation (which pays tax on its worldwide income) …
An often-over-looked aspect of regulation is how agencies are organized. Regulatory agencies for many industries, including banking, pharmaceuticals, mining, and agriculture, rely on a mix of centralized decision-making and delegated monitoring. For instance, in the case of banking, federal agencies …
For more than a century, the United States has had a worldwide tax system whereby U.S. taxpayers were subject to federal taxation on all of their income “from whatever source derived.” In what would be a sharp break from longstanding …
In the movie Office Space, the (pretty) good guys hatch a plan to divert to themselves fractions of cents that their employer, Initech, has apparently been overcharging its customers by rounding billings upward. Had any customer discovered the scam, he …
Not many people would have predicted that the third quarter of 2017 – a period that ended six months after Britain gave formal notice of its intention to leave the European Union – would see more private equity investments in …
In a world of “alternative facts” and political rhetoric crafted to mislead, it is easy to forget that idealized visions can at times illuminate more than they obfuscate. In a book review recently published in Harvard Law Review and available …
This alert discusses the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (“CFTC”) and European Commission’s (“EC”, together with the CFTC, the “Commissions”) announcements on October 13, 2017 regarding the international harmonization on two key derivatives regulatory …
Blockchain is the technology that underpins digital currencies such as Bitcoin – but it has far wider applications and is being used in a growing number of areas. The blockchain has the potential drastically to alter the global financial system. …
The UK Financial Conduct Authority (the “FCA”) has published changes to the Conduct of Business sourcebook (“COBS”) to boost the transparency of the IPO process and tackle conflicts of interest that may arise from the interaction between an issuer and …
The Uniform Law Commission (“ULC”) is an organization focused on developing and preparing “non-partisan, well-conceived, and well-drafted” state legislation in areas of state law where there is a perceived need for uniformity. In practice, once the ULC releases proposed state …
House Republicans unveiled a sweeping tax reform bill on Thursday, November 2 that proposed to lower the corporate tax rate and allow companies to immediately deduct the full cost of business assets in the year companies build or acquire them.…
Scholars are attempting to fully understand all the causes of the 2007-09 U.S. financial crisis, hoping their efforts will ensure that something like this will not happen again. Nonetheless, in this research, weaknesses in mortgage servicing regulation have been largely …
During the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. government viewed the survival of large consolidated banks as inextricably linked to the welfare of the overall economy, prompting such institutions to be labeled too-big-to-fail (TBTF) and granted government assistance. The primary and …
On Friday, October 6, the Treasury Department issued a report to the President on streamlining and reforming U.S. capital market regulation. The report covers recommendations on nine topics across the U.S. financial regulatory system. One of the topics – Access …
The financial crisis of 2007-2009 caused the most severe global economic downturn since the Great Depression. The recent crisis has generated renewed interest in the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933, which Congress adopted in response to the collapse of the …