Sky Blog
Companies with dual class shares have, as the term suggests, two (or more) classes of common stock. One class gives its holders voting power proportionate to their equity shareholdings. The other offers a group of shareholders, normally corporate insiders, weighted …
Direct listings, the most promising disruptor of IPOs, received a significant boost this week, thanks to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruling on a petition from the Council of Institutional Investors.
Most common in the tech industry, direct …
A California state court dismissed a putative securities fraud class action against Uber, as well as certain individuals and underwriters, on the grounds of inconvenient forum, holding that the federal forum selection provision (FFP) in Uber’s charter was valid and
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 …
Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are increasingly being used as an alternate vehicle to traditional initial public offerings. Companies that go public through a traditional IPO process are often subject to shareholder securities class actions. Inevitably, securities class actions will …
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone from politicians to reporters to ordinary Americans have been talking about drug treatments, vaccines, and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval process. These discussions have centered on vaccine developments by well-known pharmaceutical …
Since Google (now Alphabet) issued dual-class stock at its IPO in 2004, the subject has been vigorously debated throughout the world. Unlike firms whose shares all have equal voting rights (“one-share, one-vote firms”), companies with dual-class stock allow a founder …
On December 30, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced proposed amendments to its auditor independence requirements. Comments on the proposed amendments will be due 60 days after publication in the federal register, meaning comments likely will be due …
When Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman announced plans to sell stakes in state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) in 2016, he was also setting the stage for the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in history. On December …
Dual class capital structures have spread exponentially in recent years across much of the corporate world, as has previously been reported on this blog. Dual class listed companies today account for around $4 trillion of US total stock market value …
Most everyone has had their say about the collapse of WeWork’s failed initial public offering (“IPO”).[1] Clearly, this failure was overdetermined, as many competing causes can explain it, including: (1) the extraordinary level of self-dealing that its CEO, Adam …
The rise and fall of The We Company IPO bubble is one of those events that, like the subprime mortgage bubble that preceded the financial crisis, calls for an examination of market structures that could have produced such a precipitous …
Benchmark Capital partner and legendary tech investor Bill Gurley recently declared on CNBC, “It took me two decades to figure this out, but I think Silicon Valley’s been on the bad end of a bad joke for about four decades …
The dramatic implosion of the IPO of The We Company, parent of office-sharing firm WeWork, (the “WeWork IPO) has attracted intense scrutiny across the business community. For scholars and practitioners who work at the intersection of law, business, and technology, …
How do disclosure requirements influence a private firm’s decision to go public? This is an important question for regulators and corporate finance professionals, given current debate about how much information private firms should have to disclose. Conceptually, public disclosure requirements …
Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a new form of fundraising whereby blockchain-related ventures raise public capital in exchange for newly issued digital tokens. The issued tokens may represent a variety of rights, ranging from financial rights – such as dividend …
Initial public offerings of companies with dual-class shares have made headlines in recent years. An increasing number of newly listed companies have introduced classes of stock with superior voting rights, which typically allow company founders and top executives to maintain …
While the list of prospective issuers with credit ratings is lengthy, literature is sparse on how ratings from multiple credit rating agencies (CRAs) affect the performance of a company’s initial public offering (IPO). Our research is motivated by the lack …
Recent research on the effectiveness of the SEC’s filing review and comment letter process has focused almost exclusively on reviews of Forms 10-K and other periodic filings. Reviews of filings involving transactions such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have received …
Executive compensation elicits strong opinions from shareholders, practitioners, and the public alike. Ideally, compensation packages should be designed to attract, retain, and motivate executives to perform in accordance with the objectives of their companies’ shareholders. This idea is consistent with …