State-owned enterprises (SOEs) can help cause but also solve the climate crisis. A lot depends on the controlling shareholders of SOEs – governments – which wield significant legal and economic power over SOEs’ actions. If we are serious about holding …

Initial public offerings (IPOs) and direct listings (DLs) offer two different mechanisms for a firm to obtain a listing in the public capital markets. Historically, DLs have been rare in the U.S., but that has changed in recent years, starting …

What is the purpose of the corporation in society? Whose interests are corporate managers supposed to advance? How can corporate law and governance best promote social welfare? For the past 50 years, most scholars and business leaders would have answered …

Four score and twelve years ago, Adolf Berle and Merrick Dodd debated the fundamental role of corporations within society. We have engaged in that debate ever since. In a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all …

Delaware General Corporation Law § 220 permits shareholders to inspect a corporation’s books and records for a proper purpose, such as investigating managerial misconduct, valuing shares, or communicating with other shareholders. The Delaware case law interpreting this statute has created …

The debate over short-term thinking at corporations has so far focused largely on companies in the U.S. and the UK. The fact that controlling shareholders are less common in those countries than in many others may explain why the extensive …

In a forthcoming chapter, we explore the duality of corporate purpose, which reflects two sides of corporate law and governance. First, because each corporation must specify a purpose in its charter, corporate purpose can be understood at the level of …

Financial crises are often followed by debates about whether bankers’ incentives helped create distress in the financial sector.  We contribute to this debate by documenting the extent to which bankers’ pay contains prudence-related targets, the association between those targets and …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …