June 2015

Last week, S.E.C Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher, gave a speech, Activism, Short-Termism, and the SEC: Remarks at the 21st Annual Stanford Directors’ College. I agree with many of Commissioner Gallagher’s views on short-termism, and (I will semi-shamelessly note) he cited one of my earlier posts about the role of activists on board decision making. In his remarks, he said, with regard to short-termsim (i.e., companies operating for short term rather than long-term gains):

The current picture is bleak . . . 

Clearly, there’s a way for all the parties . . . to co-exist peacefully. The SEC sets a level playing field; companies manage themselves for the long-term with the vigorous oversight of the board; and activists put pressure on those companies that fall short of that ideal.[47] Unfortunately, we are not in that happy place. Rather, there seems to be a predominance of short-term thinking at the expense of long-term investing. Some activists are swooping in, making a lot of noise, and demanding one of a number of ways to drive a short-term pop in value: spinning off a profitable division, beginning a share buy-back program, or slashing capital expenditures or research and development expenses. Having inflated

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I was traveling to the annual CALI Conference on Law School Computing when this happened, but I thought I would share it, in case you haven’t seen it yet.

Two police officers showed up at the annual meeting of PNE Wind AG, a German company focusing on renewable energy. They sealed the room where votes were tabulated and seized documents, apparently to investigate vote-tampering charges filed by two of PNE Wind’s supervisory board members.

Not surprisingly, the company’s stock price dropped more 13% in the two days following the meeting. It rebounded afterward but, curiously, has dropped another 6% in the week since authorities announced that no further investigation was warranted. But a few other things have been going on in Europe in the last week, so the second drop may not have anything to do with the investigation.

Put this at the top of your list of things that can go wrong at the annual meeting.
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I was at the CALI meeting to speak on How to Ruin a Presentation with PowerPoint. All the CALI presentations will be posted on YouTube, so I’ll let you know when links are available, if you want to see

Chen Chen, Xiumin Martin, Sugata Roychowdhury, and Xin Wang have posted a paper to SSRN that attempts to identify firms that suffer from poor internal information flow by comparing the relative insider trading profits of high level managers and low level managers.  They find that when lower level managers make higher profits – suggesting that they have better information than higher level officers – the firm’s external financial reporting suffers.

[More under the cut]

Library

A number of months ago, a friend told me about Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The vision of the Imagination Library is “to foster a love of reading among [the] county’s preschool children and their families by providing them with the gift of a specially selected book each month.”

The books are free of charge, and anyone with preschool children can sign up, regardless of family income. Our two-year old son loves getting the books in the mail.  

While the Imagination Library has already served over 800,000 children, I wonder if their choice architecture is limiting their reach. Also, I wonder if their choice architecture is preventing use of the program by families who need the books the most. Currently, families can sign up online to receive the books. It is a simple process, but you need to have heard about the program, need to have internet access, and need to be able to fill out the sign-up questions.

A nudge, such as an opt-out form (through the mail, or, if allowed, at the hospital) might allow the Imagination Library to reach a greater number of children. (If Gerber Life Insurance knows when we have a baby, I…

In my final post on the subject of “respectability” of lawyers (the first four can be found here, here, here and here), I’d like to tie my thoughts together, discussing what the various parties can do to make Bird and Orozco’s thesis of assimilation of lawyers into corporate business teams the “new normal”.  This should give lawyers more career opportunities in the future, slow the loss of influence of the legal profession in businesses, and make legal education a more attractive choice.  Much of the discussion in academia has ignored the in-house counsel approach as being a viable option for the woes of the legal industry.  Below the fold, this post will discuss the roles that academia, in-house counsel, and business firms each may play in increasing the potential for success of a new model for business lawyers.

It’s always nice to blog and research about a hot topic. Last week I wrote about compliance challenges for those who would like to rush down to do business in Cuba- the topic of this summer’s research. Yesterday, Corporate Counsel Magazine wrote about the FCPA issues; one of my concerns. Earlier this week, I attended a meeting with the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce and the United States International Trade Commission. Apparently, on December 17th, the very same day that President Obama made his surprise announcement that he wanted to re-open relations with Cuba, Senator Ron Wyden coincidentally sent a request to the USITC asking for an investigation and report on trade with Cuba and an analysis of restrictions. Accordingly, the nonpartisan USITC has been traveling around the country speaking to lawyers and business professionals conducting fact-finding meetings, in order to prepare a report that will be issued to the public in September 2015. Tomorrow the Miami Finance Forum is holding an event titled the New Cuba Revolution.

This will be my third and final post on business and Cuba and in this post I will discuss the focus of my second potential law review article…

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for himself, Justice Anthony Kennedy and the four liberal justices that:

“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them… If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.”

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent, joined by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, suggesting that the health care reform should be called SCOTUScare because the high court has now intervened twice to save the flawed law.

The opinion is available here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-114_qol1.pdf

The AALS Annual meeting will be held in NYC in January, 2016.  The Section on Business Associations will be co-hosting a program entitled The Corporate Law and Economics Revolution 40 Years Later: The Impact of Economics and Finance Scholarship on Modern Corporate Law.

Presenters will include Judge Frank Easterbrook, Professor Roberta Romano  (Yale) and Professor Kent Greenfield (Boston College).

 The full call for papers is available here:  Download AALS Call for Papers 2016-1. The deadline for submitting an abstract (please send to Professor Usha Rodrigues at  rodrig@uga.edu) is August 27, 2015. 

I had the privilege of sitting in on a stimulating paper session on “Private Fiduciary Law” at the Law and Society Association conference in Seattle last month.  The program featured some super work by some great scholars.  My favorite piece from the session, however, is a draft book chapter written by Gordon Smith that he recently posted to SSRN.  Aptly entitled The Modern Business Judgment Rule, the chapter grapples with the current state of the business judgment rule in Delaware by tracing its development and reading the disparate doctrinal tea leaves.  Here is a summary of his “take,” as excerpted from his abstract (spoiler alert!):  “The modern business judgment rule is not a one-size-fits-all doctrine, but rather a movable boundary, marking the shifting line between judicial scrutiny and judicial deference.”

In the mere 18 pages of text he uses to engage his description, analysis, and conclusion, Gordon gives us all a great gift. His summary is useful, his language is clear, and his analysis and conclusions are incredibly useful, imho.  I am no soothsayer, but I predict that this will be a popular piece of work.

Gordon posted on his paper the other day on The…