Sky Blog
Activist hedge funds will soon likely have greater leverage in proxy contests, thanks to a new rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission. But will that benefit shareholders who care about long-term value? Our study suggests that it will – …
If a U.S. firm is a takeover target, it is almost entirely up to its board to decide whether to offer resistance, i.e., to formally reject a specific bid, and potentially take financial or operational actions to defend against the …
In many jurisdictions, poison pills are devised and implemented by the board of directors without shareholders being involved. Since the 2007 Supreme Court case[1] (in re Bulldog Sauce) in Japan, however, courts have largely relied on the …
Employees at U.S. public corporations have increasingly demanded that their concerns be heard at the very senior levels of management. If current trends continue, boards of directors could also be challenged to accommodate “worker voice” more formally. Rather than being …
In early 2020, in BlackRock Credit Allocation Income Tr., et al. v. Saba Capital Master Fund, Ltd.,1 the Delaware Supreme Court reiterated that Delaware courts will enforce clear and unambiguous advance notice bylaws according to their terms using …
Engaged shareholder voting is often perceived as the linchpin of sound corporate governance. That reputation is well deserved: Even as corporate governance has broadened its sights of late to accommodate a wider set of stakeholders, the pivotal role of shareholders …
An extensive body of literature that spans accounting, corporate finance, management, and other adjacent disciplines examines the relationship between senior executives’ contractual incentives (e.g., bonus plans, stock and option holdings) and various properties of their firms’ financial reporting and disclosures. …
To what extent do directors care about financial reporting? Prior research provides some evidence that financial reporting quality is important to boards and that financial misreporting influences their executive retention decisions. For example, the public revelation of past financial reporting …
Let’s be clear about this: The Twitter board was under no legal compulsion to accept Elon Musk’s offer for the company and, from a corporate governance structural point of view, was in an unassailable position until the 2024 shareholders meeting. …
How does the possibility of being taken over affect the disclosure of information by the management of the target firm? This has been a question of considerable interest in the accounting and finance literature because transparency is very important for …
Meade v. Christie et al., an interlocutory appeal in a shareholder class action challenging a going private merger, is currently pending before the Iowa Supreme Court.[1] The appeal will test the strength of a director-liability shield law patterned on …
Research has shown that venture capital (VC) firms substantially influence the overall economy. According to Gornall and Strebulaev (2021), among all U.S. public companies founded since 1968, VC-backed companies account for 77 percent of total market capitalization, 41 percent of …
One of management’s many important roles is to provide information to market participants. However, this information may be self-serving rather than beneficial to the market, especially in the case of voluntary disclosure. To curb this possibility, boards of directors are …
Over the last several years, cyberattacks, including from foreign state actors, have affected thousands of companies and government agencies. Past corporate victims include Yahoo!, Home Depot, and LinkedIn. And the real world consequences of a cyberattack became vivid to the …
The Delaware Court of Chancery’s recent decision denying a motion to dismiss in In re The Boeing Company Derivative Litigation, 2021 WL 4059934 (Del. Ch. Sept. 7, 2021), reminds directors and their counsellors of the importance of board and …
In an important decision this week, the Delaware Court of Chancery permitted a Caremark duty-of-oversight claim to proceed against the directors of the Boeing Company. Stockholder plaintiffs sued Boeing’s board, seeking to recover costs and economic losses associated with the …
With the increasing internationalization of law and legal scholarship, comparative corporate governance has seen a burgeoning volume of research from a practical, theoretical, and empirical perspective. Practically speaking, both internationally and within individual countries, most corporate governance research deals with …
Codetermination is a system of shared corporate governance between workers and shareholders. While such a system has long been a staple of the European business world, it has been generally ignored by U.S. corporate governance scholars. When it has made …
Environmental, social and governance, or “ESG”, considerations are seemingly ubiquitous in the current financial, corporate and regulatory landscape. In parallel with the socio-economic upheaval of 2020 and a continuing academic debate around corporate purpose and the efficacy and forms of …