Columbia Law School
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Finance & Economics
Keeping Bank Examinations Confidential in Litigation
In a bank examination, regulators evaluate a financial institution’s compliance with applicable laws and regulations. The process is generally non-public, and the bank examination privilege helps keep it confidential. But questions have recently arisen about how the privilege is meant …
Jones Day Discusses the OCC’s Latest Fintech Developments
The Comptroller of the Currency (the “OCC”) has been working for over a year to develop a comprehensive framework to improve the OCC’s ability to identify and understand trends and innovations in the financial services industry, as well …
Earnings Expectations and Employee Safety May Not Mix
The pressure to meet earnings expectations has grown intense for U.S. companies, and may be damaging the health and safety of workers. Missing analyst estimates, even by a small amount, can lead to significant negative reactions from investors. For example, …
Wachtell Lipton Discusses Acquisition Financing: the Year Behind and the Year Ahead
If 2008 through 2010 were years of tumult and recession in U.S. financing markets, and 2011 through 2015 years of recovery and growth, marked by ever-lower yields and record-setting financing activity even in the face of new compliance regimes, 2016 …
The Impact of Publicly Disclosing Company Tax Returns
The tax affairs of large corporations have recently come under intense scrutiny. One symptom of this scrutiny has been increasing disclosure requirements, both to the public and to taxing authorities. One form of increased disclosure includes putting more information about …
How Institutional Investor Objectives Affect Firm Valuation and Governance
Over the last 30 years, institutional investors have dramatically increased their stakes in U.S. companies. In the 1980s, they held approximately 20 percent to 30 percent of the average firm in the U.S. By 2010, they held over 65 percent. …
Regulatory Entrepreneurship
In our new article, available here, we examine what we term “regulatory entrepreneurship”: companies pursuing a line of business in which changing the law is a significant part of the business plan. Regulatory entrepreneurship is not a new phenomenon, …
How Antitakeover Legislation Affects Accounting
In common law countries such as the U.S., corporate governance aims primarily to protect shareholders from managers’ self-dealing. Post-Enron reforms such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and various Securities and Exchange Commission rules are examples of this shareholder-oriented approach. …
Adventures in Sovereign Debt: Enforcing Russia’s Loan to Ukraine
In December 2015, Ukraine defaulted on a $3 billion loan made two years previously by the Russian government. Governments lend to one another all the time, but this loan was extraordinary, and so were the events that followed in its …
Shearman & Sterling Examines the Changing Fiduciary Duty Landscape in a Trump Presidency
The fiduciary standards for institutions and individuals providing investment advice throughout the retail investment and municipal securities markets are currently undergoing significant change. Following on the heels of the issuance of a final Department of Labor (the “DOL”) fiduciary rule …
Proskauer Rose Discusses the Potential for Tax Reform in 2017
In the U.S. general election held on November 8, 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected to become the 45th President of the United States. Republicans also retained their majorities in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. …
The Human Factor in Corporate Loan Quality
The syndicated loan market is one of the largest sources of financing for U.S. firms. This market has experienced tremendous growth over the past 20 years. In fact, some recent estimates suggest that U.S. firms obtain over $1 trillion in …
Understanding Runs in the Shadow Banking System
There are two established explanations for bank runs: coordination problems among depositors and information asymmetries between bank managers and depositors. In a new paper, “Information Gaps and Shadow Banking,” forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review and available here, I …
PwC Discusses Election’s Impact on Advisers’ Duty to Retirement Investors
We believe the recent election will have less impact on the Department of Labor’s (DOL) fiduciary duty rule than some in the media are currently speculating.[1] While some provisions may be modified by a new Administration, we believe the …
Community Banks Play an Important Role in International Trade
Small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) play a significant role in the global economy, accounting for a substantial portion of employment and domestic production. According to some estimates, SMEs’ contribution to gross domestic product exceeds 51 percent in high-income countries, consistent …
How Venture Capital Improves the Market Value of Firms that Go Public
It is well established that venture capitalists can improve the product market value — the quality of projects and employees — at the private firms they invest in, either by making the firms more efficient (Chemmanur, Krishnan, and Nandy (2011)) …
Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses OCC and CFPB’s Approaches to FinTech
This is the fourth in a series examining the increased regulatory scrutiny on new and innovative financial technologies (“FinTech”).[1]
This update considers the initiatives of two federal regulatory agencies—the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the “OCC”) and …
How Financial Reporting Quality Affects Corporate Dividends
Dividend payment is a major corporate decision that occurs regularly, involves substantial amounts of money, interacts with all other important company decisions, and has a significant impact on firm value. Our recent study, available here, examines whether financial reporting …
Restructuring Venezuelan Debt
As sovereign borrowers and their creditors know all too well, the legal framework governing their respective rights and obligations (the so-called international financial architecture) lacks an effective means to enforce payment in most circumstances or to modify payment obligations when …