Sky Blog
President-Elect Trump’s transition website promises to “dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act and replace it with new policies to encourage economic growth and job creation.” For those who wonder what that might mean in more detail, we believe that Rep. Jeb Hensarling’s …
Going back as far as the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken action to improve the readability and understandability of financial data. In 1969, a report commissioned by the SEC, the Wheat Report, indicated that …
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 …
Regulatory agencies are created to act in the public interest but often end up acting in the interests of those regulated. This is known as regulatory capture. The theory of regulatory capture may be given both a broad and narrow …
On October 26, 2016 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed proxy rule amendments that would require, in a contested election of directors, the public company and the shareholder activist to each use a “universal” proxy card – i.e., a …
Attempts by U.S. federal officials to regulate corporate governance have been criticized by prominent scholars as “quackery.”[1] Major reforms like Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank may in fact do far more harm than good. But what if these efforts at healing …
On November 7, 2016, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) overturned an Administrative Law Judge’s (the “ALJ”) initial decision[1] and issued an opinion In re The Robare Group, Ltd., Advisers Act Rel. No. 4566 (Nov. 7, …
Good morning and thank you, Dean (Trevor) Morrison (of New York University Law School) for that very kind introduction. It is a pleasure to be here today and I want to thank the NYU Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement
To date, nearly 300 companies have adopted proxy access bylaws, including over 40 percent of S&P 500 companies. Given the widespread adoption of proxy access by large U.S. companies, it was only a matter of time before a shareholder actually …
Today (November 16), we will consider the future of financial regulation and, more specifically, whether the Dodd-Frank Act went too far.[1]. I am I happy to share my views with you, but before I begin, I must give
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White, after nearly four years as the agency’s head, today announced that she intends to leave at the end of the Obama Administration. Under Chair White’s leadership, the Commission strengthened protections for investors …
The European Union (EU) enacted a series of regulations in the early 2000s to improve the financial markets of member states. While the new regulations were formally the same across the EU, member countries must individually implement, supervise, and enforce …
The use of digital currencies, like Bitcoin, is becoming widespread. To date, much of the focus on digital currencies has been directed at their potential to substitute for or complement fiat currencies, but the true innovation lies in their underlying …
Thank you, Michael [Barr], for that kind introduction. Thank you also to the University of Michigan and the Office of Financial Research for organizing this important conference. I am pleased to be here with you today. This conference is a …
On September 23, U.S. District Judge William Pauley refused to approve a settlement between the CFTC and Deutsche Bank covering the bank’s failure to report swaps properly. Instead of rubber-stamping the settlement, the judge asked the parties for additional briefing. …
“Nice merger you’ve got here. It would be a shame if anything was to happen to it.”[1]
In antitrust and related areas of economic regulation, private leveraging is risky business. Large firms that use substantial market power in one …
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on October 11 that, in fiscal year 2016, it filed 868 enforcement actions exposing financial reporting-related misconduct by companies and their executives and misconduct by registrants and gatekeepers, as the agency continued to enhance …
Oral argument in the insider trading case, Salman v. United States, prompted dozens of questions related to the key issue before the U.S Supreme Court: whether an investment banker personally benefitted directly or indirectly when he disclosed to his brother …
Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC” or the “Commission”) announced its second whistleblower retaliation case since the enactment of Dodd-Frank’s anti-retaliation provisions in 2011. The In the Matter of International Game Technology [1] case is also …