How the SEC Uses Information Disclosed on Earnings Conference Calls

By Alina Lerman, Thomas D. Steffen and Kangkang Zhang July 24, 2023 by renholding

Earnings conference calls are an important way for firms to communicate with external stakeholders. Equity shareholders, buy-side and sell-side analysts, debtholders, and other capital market participants view the calls as informative beyond the contemporaneous earnings announcements. Yet, little is known …

Wachtell Lipton Revisits the “New Paradigm” for Corporate Governance

By Martin Lipton, Steven A. Rosenblum, Karessa L. Cain, Elina Tetelbaum and Carmen X.W. Lu July 21, 2023 by renholding

In view of the attacks on “woke” corporations, ongoing legislative opposition to the consideration by investors and corporations of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, legal challenges to elements of ESG itself (notably, initiatives designed to further diversity, equity and …

Bailout Blues: The Write-Down of the AT1 Bonds in the Credit Suisse Bailout

By Horst Eidenmüller and Javier Paz Valbuena April 17, 2023 by renholding

A key principle of Chapter 11 corporate reorganizations is the “absolute priority rule.” It requires that the claims of a dissenting class of creditors be paid in full before any stakeholders in a class junior to such dissenting …

Activist Shareholders in Corporate Governance: Lessons from Australia

By Tim Bowley March 14, 2023 by renholding

Much of the debate about activist shareholders is informed by experience in Northern Hemisphere markets, particularly the United States. In my recently published book, I examine the topic from an Australian perspective.

Australia is ideal for exploring shareholder activism for …

When Will Investors Vote for Socially Beneficial but Costly ESG Policies?

By Daniel Friedman, John Duffy, Jean Paul Rabanal and Olga Rud January 18, 2023 by renholding

Investors are increasingly interested in whether firms implement environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies that, for example, reduce the firms’ carbon footprints, diversify their workplaces, or better protect customers’ private information. Some socially beneficial policies (e.g., improving energy-efficiency) may also …

How Market Feedback Affects CEO Pay

By C.S. Agnes Cheng, Iftekhar Hasan, Feng Tang and Jing Xie December 13, 2022 by renholding

Stock prices affect various corporate decisions such as the amount of CEO compensation, as emphasized in traditional pay-for-performance studies, and capital investment. However, an unanswered question is whether changes in firms’ stock price in a short window around events related …

Shareholder Primacy and Basketball

By David H. Webber December 2, 2022 by renholding

I recently participated in a festschrift for retired justice (and noted stakeholderist) Leo E. Strine, Jr., hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Business. Justice Strine’s interventions in the debate over shareholder primacy have added heft, pragmatism, …

Corporate Governance Beyond the Shareholder and Stakeholder Models

By Dirk Schoenmaker Willem Schramade and Jaap W. Winter November 7, 2022 by renholding

In a new paper, we compare the main models of corporate governance (Schoenmaker, Schramade and Winter, 2022). One is the stakeholder model, which recognizes that companies have responsibilities to society that are broader than just making a profit. A problem …

How Corporate Managers Think about Forward-Looking Guidance

By Andrew C. Call, Paul Hribar, Douglas J. Skinner and David Volant October 17, 2022 by renholding

Headlines during earnings season often focus on the forward-looking guidance corporate managers provide. Yet, questions remain about managers’ perceptions of the guidance process and the tradeoffs they face in deciding whether and what to guide. To gain greater insight, we …

Green Pills

By John Armour, Luca Enriques and Thom Wetzer September 7, 2022 by renholding

Many of the world’s largest firms have recently announced their intention to reduce carbon emissions over the coming decades. The financial sector claims to have mobilized over $130 trillion in support of the net zero transition, and 33 percent of …

How Private Shareholder Engagements on Material ESG Issues Affect Companies

By Rob Bauer, Jeroen Derwall and Colin Tissen August 8, 2022 by renholding

Shareholders have increasingly taken the lead in pushing for corporate sustainability. In 2021, for example, 20 percent of U.S. environmental and social shareholder proposals won over 50 percent of shareholder support, while in 2016 only 3 percent of such proposals …

ISS Discusses Securities Class-Action Settlements in First Half of 2022

By Jeff Lubitz July 18, 2022 by renholding

The value of U.S. shareholder class action settlements in the first half of 2022 totaled $2.32 billion, the exact amount as the same period in 2021. However, the quantity of settlements in the first six months of the year increased

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Paul Hastings Discusses Japanese Poison Pills Without Shareholders’ Blessing

By Toshiyuki Arai July 8, 2022 by renholding

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 …

Rolling Back Dodd-Frank: Investors’ and Banks’ Responses to Financial Market Deregulation

By Michael H.R. Erkens and Ying Gan June 29, 2022 by renholding

In the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Dodd-Frank created a new financial regulatory landscape with intensified federal oversight and an extensive set of regulations on banks, …

The Unsung Upside of Share Repurchases

By Richard A. Booth June 15, 2022 by renholding

Stock repurchases by issuing corporations have always been controversial. But they have become even more so recently because of the perception that the excess funds used to finance buybacks have come from tax cuts and other sources (such as government …

Public Corporations’ Bylaws as Standard Form Contracts

By Eli Bukspan May 13, 2022 by renholding

Vast corporate growth over more than a century has weakened shareholder voting rights, as highlighted by, among other things, the rise of dual-voting stock IPOs. The extent of that growth, and the lack of people’s power to negotiate with …

Stakeholder Capitalism as ESG-Constrained Shareholder Capitalism

By Peter H. Huang March 11, 2022 by renholding

Intense debates are alive and well on the nature and meaning of corporate purpose and corporate personhood. In a new paper, I analyze proposals by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission to require that all reporting companies make periodic, mandatory …

SPACs and PIPEs as Efficient Tools for Corporate Growth

By Frank Fagan and Saul Levmore March 8, 2022 by renholding

A SPAC can be understood as an alternative to an IPO, with investors using a large investor, a PIPE, to find out whether the SPAC founder has really chosen a good target or is simply rushing to get a big …

ISS Discusses Shareholder Class Actions Related to Covid-19

By Jeff Lubitz February 21, 2022 by renholding

As the world completes a full two years of navigating the perils of the Coronavirus pandemic, U.S. shareholders continue to file class action complaints alleging companies with various acts of fraud related to COVID-19.

As previously reported by ISS Securities

…

ISS Discusses Proposed Shareholder Class-Action Against ING Groep

By Elisa Mendoza February 16, 2022 by renholding

ING Groep N.V. – a company that offers banking services to private clients, small businesses, large corporations, financial institutions, and governments worldwide – is at the epicenter of a proposed shareholder class action. Investors are looking to remediate the significant

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