Sky Blog
New leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is making it a priority to reverse the decline in the number of U.S public companies. Its method: reversing regulatory creep and reducing the onerous burdens of compliance that deter all …
In May 2023, the SEC adopted new disclosure rules on company stock buybacks (“New Disclosures”) to help investors better evaluate whether the buybacks serve management’s personal interest at the expense of the company and its shareholders. The New Disclosures would …
On August 7, 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which imposed a 1 percent excise tax on share repurchases by public corporations. President Biden proposed quadrupling the tax to 4 percent in his 2023 State of the Union …
The growth and concentration of the investment management industry has captivated the scholarly community. Recent scholarship has focused on the “Big Three” investment managers — Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street Global Advisors — and charted their rapid accumulation of assets …
After receiving board approval to buy back stock under a 10b5-1 plan, a company interpreted Rule 10b5-1 in a manner with which the SEC disagreed. The SEC did not allege that the company traded on the basis of material nonpublic …
On May 3, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) adopted rules to require more detailed qualitative and quantitative disclosure from reporting issuers regarding their share repurchases. While the final rules did not include some of the more onerous …
On December 27, 2022, Treasury released Notices 2023-7 and 2023-2 (the “Notices”). The Notices provide initial guidance on the 15% corporate minimum tax on the book income of large corporations (the “CAMT”) and the non-deductible 1% excise tax on certain …
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 …
Corporate payouts have reached record levels. Over the past half-century, publicly-held U.S. firms have more than tripled inflation-adjusted dividends, while real share repurchase values have ballooned from $5 billion in 1971 to almost $1 trillion in 2018 and become the …
On December 15, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission considered proposals to enhance disclosure about stock buybacks. Commission Chairman Gary Gensler’s statement supporting the proposals is available here. The statements of commissioners Caroline A. Crenshaw and Allison Herren Lee in …
We are living through a stock buyback revolution. Over the last decade, the amount that U.S. public firms have spent on buying back stock from their shareholders rose threefold to a record level of roughly $1 trillion in each of …
Members of the academic community, the business world, and law firms have long been debating shareholder primacy, stakeholder governance, and corporate purpose. In a forthcoming essay, I outline these arguments but suggest that reform of corporate governance should be focused …
The European Commission retained Ernst & Young (“EY”) to undertake a detailed study of “short-termism” and, implicitly, to report whether it was a major roadblock to more sustainable corporate governance. Their study was then presented at a three day international …
On October 15, the SEC announced a settlement stemming from a company’s series of stock buybacks undertaken pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 plan. Although the SEC concluded that the company initiated the 10b5-1 plan at a time when it possessed …