October 2017

Readers of the blog know that a few months ago, the University of Tennessee hosted a BLPB symposium, with essays to be published in a forthcoming volume of Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law.  It was a terrific amount of fun, where we bloggers who usually just interact over the internet got a chance to see each other face to face (in some cases, for the first time!)

Anyhoo, I just posted my contribution to the symposium, Family Loyalty: Mutual Fund Voting and Fiduciary Obligation, to SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

In recent years, institutional investors have increasingly come to dominate the market for publicly-traded stock.  Mutual funds have become especially important, controlling trillions of dollars of corporate equity.

The SEC has made clear that it is the fiduciary responsibility of fund administrators to vote their shares in a manner that benefits investors in the fund.  Sponsoring companies have responded by creating centralized research offices that determine the voting policies across all of the funds they administer.  Though there may be some variation at the individual fund level, most fund families vote as a block.

The practice of centralized voting raises the question whether each fund

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American University Washington College of Law is seeking applications, both entry-level and lateral, for tenure-track or tenured appointment to the faculty.  The law school is looking at several areas, but fields of particular need are securities regulation, corporate finance, business associations, and the regulation of banks and financial institutions.  The official announcement contains more details, but applications should not be sent through Interfolio; instead please send a cover letter and CV directly to Brian Coffill, Faculty Coordinator, at bcoffill@wcl.american.edu.

Below the line is a call for papers that I just received.

The Atlantic Law Journal is a double-blind peer-reviewed law journal, and it is one of the regional publications of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business.

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The Atlantic Law Journal is now open for submissions and is soliciting papers for its upcoming Volume 20 with an expected publication date in summer 2018.  The Atlantic Law Journal is listed in Cabell’s, fully searchable in Thomson-Reuters Westlaw, and listed by Washington & Lee.   The journal is a double-blind peer-reviewed publication of the Mid-Atlantic Academy of Legal Studies in Business (MAALSB).  Acceptance rates are at or less than 25%, and have been for all our recent history.  We publish articles that explore the intersection of business and law, as well as pedagogical topics. Please see our website at http://www.atlanticlawjournal.org/submissions/ for the submission guidelines, the review timeline, and more information regarding how to submit.  Submissions or questions can be sent to Managing Editor, Evan Peterson, at petersea [at] udmercy.edu.

The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation recently contained a notice about the Delaware Corporate Law Resource Center, which I thought might interest our readers as well. The post is reproduced below the line.

The oral histories of iconic Delaware cases are the most interesting, and useful, part of the website to me, though some of the cases do not appear to have materials yet. In addition to the cases, there is an oral history on 102(b)(7) to which my judge (VC Stephen Lamb) and others contributed. I hope the existing materials will be added to and expanded over time.  

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The University of Pennsylvania Law School Institute for Law and Economics (ILE) is pleased to announce the creation and public availability of a new website devoted to resources relating to the development of the Delaware General Corporation Law and related case law. This website (the Delaware Corporation Law Resource Center) has two principal components. The first is a compilation of resources relating to the Delaware General Corporation Law itself, including a link to the text of the statute, and links to the bills to amend the statute since its general revision in 1967.

If you’re a fan of wine (I am) and international business if of interest (it is), this Faculty Development might be for you.  It overlaps with the AALS Annual Meeting, so it won’t work for me this year, but it looks like a good program.  Have a look: 

Temple University’s Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) presents

Faculty Development in International Business: Santiago, Chile (January 5-11, 2018)

Business Innovation in Chile: A Case Study of the Wine Export Sector

Leave winter behind this January and join us for a summer experience in Chilean wine country. As an innovation-driven economy, the United States prides itself on developing and delivering innovative goods and services domestically and globally through high-tech exports, creative branding, and in-demand services. Among those exports is our growing wine sector, led by Napa Valley but recently expanding into other parts of California, Oregon, Virginia, and other lesser-known wine producing regions of the United States. Despite this expansion, the United States remains behind old world wine producers in Europe. Chile and Australia also outpace the United States in terms of wine exports and have been leading the way in innovative production and marketing techniques.

On this faculty/professional-oriented immersion…

The following is a guest post from Bernard S. Sharfman*:

The foundation of my understanding of corporate governance rests on a small but growing number of essays, articles, and books.  These writings include Henry Manne’s Mergers and the Market for Corporate Control, Michael Dooley’s Two Models of Corporate Governance, Stephen Bainbridge’s Director Primacy: The Means and Ends of Corporate Governance and The Business Judgment Rule as Abstention Doctrine, Kenneth J. Arrow, The Limits of Organization, Frank H. Easterbrook & Daniel R. Fischel, The Economic Structure of Law, Zohar Goshen & Gideon Parchomovsky’s The Essential Role of Securities Regulation, and Alon Brav, Wei Jiang, Frank Partnoy & Randall Thomas’ Hedge Fund Activism, Corporate Governance, and Firm Performance.  Recently, I have added to this esteemed list Zohar Goshen and Richard Squire’s Principal Costs: A New Theory for Corporate Law and Governance.

Goshen and Squire put forth a new theory, the “principal-cost theory,” which posits that a firm’s optimal corporate governance arrangements result from a calculus that seeks to minimize total control costs, not just agency costs (“the economic losses resulting from managers’ natural incentive to advance their personal interests even when those interests conflict with…

The information below the line is from an e-mail I received about the SEALSB Conference. The SEALSB conference is the southeastern regional conference for law professors in business schools, but we have had practicing lawyers (especially those hoping to break into academia) and law school professors participate in the past.

The conference rotates locations in the southeast, and this year the conference will be held in Atlanta, GA from November 9-11. 

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SEALSB Conference 2017
 
The deadline to upload papers for inclusion in the conference materials has been extended to this Friday, October 20th. You may upload your paper by clicking on the following link: Paper Upload. Otherwise, please bring 25 copies to the meeting.
 
Friday, October 20th is also the conference registration deadline, so if you are planning to attend the conference but have not yet registered please make sure you do so sometime this week!
 
Additional information is available on the Conference Website. We look forward to seeing you at the Georgian Terrace!

My UT Law colleague Jonathan Rohr has coauthored (with Aaron Wright) an important piece of scholarship on an of-the-moment topic–financial instrument offerings using distributed ledger technology.  Even more fun?  He and his co-author are interested in aspects of this topic at its intersection with the regulation of securities offerings.  Totally cool.

Here is the extended abstract.  I cannot wait to dig into this one.  Can you?  As of the time I authored this post, the article already had almost 700 downloads . . . .  Join the crowd!

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Blockchain-Based Token Sales, Initial Coin Offerings, and the Democratization of Public Capital Markets

Jonathan Rohr & Aaron Wright

Best known for their role in the creation of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, blockchains are revolutionizing the way tech entrepreneurs are financing their business enterprises. In 2017 alone, over $2.2 billion has been raised through the sale of blockchain-based digital tokens in what some are calling initial coin offerings or “ICOs,” with some sales lasting mere seconds. In a token sale, organizers of a project sell digital tokens to members of the public to finance the development of future technology. An active secondary market for tokens has emerged, with tokens being bought and sold…