Columbia Law School
Sky Blog
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to my colleague Commissioner Peirce and the terrific Staff in the Division of Trading and Markets for all of the hard work that so clearly went into this proposal. I’m especially grateful to
capital
Do Financial Analysts Help Improve Firm Productivity?
Academic researchers in corporate finance have in recent years taken a renewed interest in the impact of private firms on employment, growth, and other positive developments in national economies. In a recent article, we develop this new field of research …
Did Dodd-Frank Help Reduce Systemic Risk?
In response to the 2008 financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) was enacted on July 21, 2010 to overhaul the U.S. financial regulatory system. Dodd-Frank contains 390 rulemaking requirements, of which 274 (70.3 percent) …
Covington & Burling on FDIC Vice Chair Hoenig’s Plan for Financial Holding Companies
How Creditors Affect Resource Allocation at Firms in Technical Default
A central topic in financial economics is how the allocation of cash flow and control rights among providers of corporate finance should evolve with firm performance. Theoretically, allowing for a transfer of control to creditors when a firm is in …
Regulation Crowdfunding: A Viable Capital-Raising Method for Tech Companies?
Crowdfunding is an exciting development that uses the power of the internet to allow entrepreneurs and startups to efficiently raise financing from a large number of people who each contribute a small amount of money. It breaks with the past …
Skadden Discusses the Current State of the U.S. Capital Markets
The U.S. capital markets experienced continued volatility throughout much of 2016, as the bond and equity markets were affected by a series of significant events: the November U.S. presidential election; the June Brexit vote; fluctuating oil prices over the course …
Challenging the Financial Intermediation Myth
Many contemporary discussions of finance or of subjects that implicate finance – for example, federal budgetary or finance-regulatory policy – seem to be systematically colored by a seldom-examined presumption. We call this presumption the “intermediated scarce private capital myth.”
Like …
Prominent Investors Do Startups a Favor by Booting Their CEOs
The role that investors play in replacing chief executive officers of startup companies has been the subject of heated debate in the investing community, and it remains controversial whether investors in startups do better by replacing incumbent CEOs. Our recent …
Changing Law to Address Changing Markets: A Consequence-Based Inquiry
When should changes in markets for financial securities drive changes in law? In my forthcoming essay, available here, I argue that a normative framework for making that examination would increase transparency and legitimacy. It would also help counter the tendency …
Morrison & Foerster discusses FDIC’s Release of Proposed Third-Party Lending Guidance
How Conservative Accounting Helped Boost Investment during the Financial Crisis
A host of studies have examined the link between accounting and the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, most of them focusing on whether fair value accounting or accounting discretion at financial institutions helped skew valuations on bank balance sheets. In our …
PwC discusses Five Key Points from Basel’s Proposed Restrictions on Internal Models for Credit Risk
Last week, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (Basel) proposed floors and other constraints on the use of internal models for calculating credit risk capital. The proposal aims to reduce complexity and variation in the calculation of regulatory capital among …
Ownership Rights and Venture Valuation: The Case of Square, Inc.
Amid much fanfare, Square Inc. went public in an IPO at the New York Stock Exchange on November 19, 2015. Founded in San Francisco by, among others, Jack Dorsey who still runs the company to this day, the company has …
PwC discusses Ten Key Points from Basel’s Fundamental Review of the Trading Book
On January 14th, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) published its revised capital requirements for market risk. The final standard, also known as the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB), is intended to harmonize the treatment …
IPO Pricing as a Function of your Investment Banks’ Past Mistakes: The Case of Facebook
On May 18, 2012 Facebook (FB) held its initial public offering (IPO) on NASDAQ, raising over $16 billion making it one of the largest IPOs in history. To the surprise of many investors, there was almost no underpricing, as the …
The SEC’s Evolving Integration Doctrine: New Guidance on Combining Offering Methods
The Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review and the New Contingency of Bank Dividends
My recent paper explains why, from a bank supervisory perspective, the Federal Reserve’s Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) program is arguably the single most significant and innovative post-crisis regulatory reform. Established in 2011, the CCAR is an annual Federal …
PwC discusses Key Points from Basel’s Re-proposed Standardized Approach for Credit Risk
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) on December 10th issued the second iteration of its proposed revisions to the standardized approach (SA) for credit risk measurement. Following up on last year’s initial issuance, the proposed revisions are intended …
The Fall and Rise of Debt in Bank Capital Structures
Debt has undergone a remarkable resurrection in relation to banks’ capital structures. In the immediate aftermath of the crisis it was uncertain whether debt would survive at all in the Basel Committee’s minimum capital requirements for internationally active banks. Today, …