China

Who Will Regulate Central Bank Digital Currencies?

By Georges Ugeux May 12, 2021 by renholding

Though a bit provocative, this headline raises a liminal question on the various projects of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDBs): Which  governance will apply to them? Or as Juvenal, the poet in ancient Rome, famously asked, “Who will guard the …

The Information Mechanism in Corporate Citizenship: Evidence from COVID-19

By Lisa Yao Liu and Shirley Lu March 18, 2021 by renholding

When governments fail to respond quickly and effectively to a crisis, can companies help address the issue? In a recent article, we explore an important mechanism through which firms can do so as corporate citizens: information transmission within organizations. Specifically, …

How Stricter Disclosure Rules for Private Meetings Affect Stock Price Informativeness and Volatility

By Robert M. Bowen, Shantanu Dutta, Songlian Tang and Pengcheng Zhu February 17, 2021 by renholding

Private meetings between management and investors occur worldwide and are generally held at corporate headquarters with invited investors and sell-side analysts (a.k.a., site visits).  Ng and Troianovski (WSJ, 2015) report that U.S. investors pay $1.4 billion a year to securities …

The Backlash Against Chinese-Company Listings on U.S. Exchanges Has a Long History

By Georges Ugeux January 25, 2021 by renholding

The reach of American law has recently entered familiar territory: listings of international companies on U.S. exchanges. Yet the listings of Chinese companies have in particular prompted a backlash. I want to shed some light on the situation – and …

Fried Frank Discusses Trump Administration’s Trade Pressure on China and Russia

By Michael Gershberg and Justin A. Schenck January 15, 2021 by snehapandya

Throughout December 2020, the Trump administration continued its focus on China and Russia and imposed additional export and investment controls. On December 23, 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) published a final rule to …

Independent Central Banks: The Politics of Reversals

By Andreas Kern and Jack Seddon December 17, 2020 by renholding

In the United States, President Trump has struggled to decide whether Jay Powell or China’s Chairman Xi is the greater enemy to the U.S. In Turkey, President Erdogan concluded that “interest rates are the mother of all evil,” switched out …

Morgan Lewis Discusses SEC Guidance on Disclosure for China-Based Issuers

By Sean M. Donahue and David A. Sirignano December 3, 2020 by renholding

The SEC Division of Corporation Finance has provided its views regarding certain disclosure considerations for companies based in or with the majority of their operations in the People’s Republic of China.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recognizes the …

Fintech and International Financial Regulation

By Yesha Yadav November 19, 2020 by renholding

In the weeks leading up to Ant Financial’s ill-fated IPO, Jack Ma criticized the system of international banking regulation in remarks at the Bund Summit in Shanghai. The Alibaba co-founder contended that the current framework was a poor match for …

Initial Public Offerings Chinese Style

By Yiming Qian, Jay R. Ritter and Xinjian Shao November 18, 2020 by renholding

The forced postponement of Ant Group’s initial public offering (IPO), the largest ever, by the Chinese government is the latest example of the heavy-handed regulatory approach that has made it extremely costly for companies to go public in China. The …

Insider Trading and Geographic Proximity: Evidence from Covid-19

By Erin Henry, George A. Plesko and Caleb Rawson September 1, 2020 by renholding

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed how businesses operate, resulting in unprecedented stock market effects. While the U.S. stock market has historically shown little to no reaction to an infectious disease outbreak, COVID-19 precipitated a global stock market downturn now …

Could Social Media Give Small Investors Greater Say in Corporate Governance?

By James Ang, Charles Hsu, Di Tang and Chaopeng Wu August 5, 2020 by renholding

In a new paper, we ask whether social media could have a role in corporate governance. Prior to the advent of social media, a small shareholder faced prohibitive costs to reach other investors. For example, she would have had to …

Lessons from Luckin Coffee: The Underappreciated Risks of Variable Interest Entities

By Jonathan Barnett July 28, 2020 by renholding

On April 2, China’s Luckin Coffee announced that some of its employees, including the chief operating officer, had fabricated over $300 million in reported revenues. On April 21, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight …

Do Corporations Worldwide Still Prefer Delaware?

By William J. Moon June 23, 2020 by renholding

Hardly a day goes by without a headline about the brewing tension between the United States and China. But even as the Trump administration mulled de-listing Chinese firms traded in American securities markets, and Nasdaq reportedly planned to tighten its …

Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses Impact of Coronavirus on Foreign Investment in China

By William Y. Chua, Gareth Hughes, Edwin Northover, Philip Rohlik and Tingting Wu April 2, 2020 by renholding

On March 11, 2020, the Chinese government announced that the novel coronavirus epidemic had peaked within the country, with the number of new cases falling significantly. By March 16, for the first time since the coronavirus was first identified last …

Financial Regulators Warn Over Chinese Audit Quality Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

By Jay Clayton, Bill Hinman, Sagar Teotia and William D. Duhnke III February 20, 2020 by renholding

In November 2019, we met with senior representatives of the four largest U.S. audit firms, including certain of their network representatives, to discuss audit quality across their global networks and certain of the challenges faced in auditing public companies with

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Davis Polk Reviews China Antitrust in 2019

By Arthur Burke, Howard Shelanski, Ronan Harty, Miranda So and Howard Zhang February 10, 2020 by renholding

Last year marked the eleventh anniversary of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (the “AML”).  In 2019, China announced the first-ever set of proposed amendments to the AML as well as the introduction of several new regulations aimed at more transparency …

Paul Weiss Discusses D.C. Circuit Decision Ordering Chinese Banks to Produce Documents

By Brad S. Karp, Michael E. Gertzman, H. Christopher Boehning, Roberto J. Gonzalez and Karen R. King August 23, 2019 by renholding

On July 30, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed civil contempt orders by the D.C. District Court against three Chinese banks for their failure to produce documents in response to U.S. government subpoenas relating …

Cadwalader Discusses CFIUS and Foreign Investor Deals

By Joseph Moreno, Jodi Avergun, Andrew Alin, Joshua Apfelroth, and Keith Gerver August 8, 2019 by renholding

The national security implications of corporate deals involving foreign investors continues to be a headline-grabbing topic. Last summer, President Trump signed into law the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 (“FIRRMA”), which expanded the types of …

Cleary Gottlieb Discusses CFIUS and the Unwinding of Kunlun’s Acquisition of Grindr

By Paul Marquardt, John P. McGill, Jr. and Chinyelu Lee April 17, 2019 by renholding

On March 27, 2019, journalists affiliated with Reuters reported that the Kunlun Group (“Kunlun”), a China-based tech firm, was preparing to sell its wholly owned subsidiary, Grindr, after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”) informed the …

Debevoise Discusses China’s New Foreign Investment Law

By William Y. Chua, Edwin Northover, Allison Lee, Fengjian Ao and Tingting Wu April 10, 2019 by abirvarma

On March 15, 2019, China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress, passed the long-anticipated new Foreign Investment Law (the “FIL”). Promulgation of this legislation is widely held to have been accelerated in response to changes in China’s economic conditions, in …