Business Associations

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Marco Ventoruzzo (Penn State Law) alerts us to the upcoming international conference for the sixtieth anniversary of the Rivista delle società, which will be held in Venice, on San Giorgio Maggiore, on 13-14 November 2015. The title of the conference is “Rules for the Market and Market for Rules. Corporate Law and the Role of the Legislature.” The program and information on how to register (and other logistics) can be found here.  It looks like only an Italian version of the program is available on the website as of the time this is being posted, but I have an English version.  So, please just contact me if you want one.

Marco notes that the conference, organized every ten years by the Rivista, is one of the major events for corporate law scholars and practitioners in Italy (and probably in Europe as a whole). He anticipates well over 300 participants from several European countries, the U.S., and elsewhere. He notes that, as an additional incentive to participate, the venue is probably one of the most spectacular that can be imagined.  San Giorgio is a tiny island in the Venice lagoon, just in front of Saint Mark’s Square, that overlooks the…

Last week the New York Times hosted a debate about the Public Corporation’s Duty to Shareholders.  Contributors include corporate law professors Stephen Bainbridge, Tamara Belinfante, Lynn Stout, David Yosifan and Jean Rogers, CEO of Sustainability Accounting Standards Board.

This collection of essays is not only more interesting than anything that I could write, but it is also the type of short, assessable debate that would be a great starting point for discussion in a seminar or corporations class.  

-Anne Tucker

SE2-Logo2

At the end of next week, I will be at the University of Connecticut School of Business and the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center for their Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Conference.

Further information about the conference is available here, a portion of which is reproduced below:

In October 2014, Connecticut joined a growing number of states that empower for-profit corporations to expand their core missions to expressly include human rights, environmental sustainability, and other social objectives. As a new legal class of businesses, these benefit corporations join a growing range of social entrepreneurship and enterprise models that have the potential to have positive social impacts on communities in Connecticut and around the world. Designed to evaluate and enhance this potential, SE2 will feature a critical examination of the various aspects of social entrepreneurship, as well as practical guidance on the challenges and opportunities presented by the newly adopted Connecticut Benefit Corporation Act and other forms of social enterprise.

Presenters at the academic symposium on April 23 are:

  • Mystica Alexander, Bentley University
  • Norman Bishara, University of Michigan
  • Kate Cooney, Yale University
  • Lucien Dhooge, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Gwendolyn Gordon, University of Pennsylvania
  • Gil Lan, Ryerson University
  • Diana Leyden, University of

…

On April 3, Delaware Governor Jack Markell signed the Delaware Rapid Arbitration Act (DRAA) into law. The DRAA becomes effective on May 4, 2015. The DRAA is a different take on the attempted Chancery Arbitration that the Third Circuit ruled unconstitutional in 2013.

Under the DRAA, all parties in the dispute must agree to the arbitration. The DRAA does not use sitting judges to arbitrate, as the Chancery Arbitration attempted to do, but the Delaware Court of Chancery will be “facilitating” the process under the DRAA. Among other things, the Delaware Court of Chancery can assist in appointing an arbitrator for the process, enter final judgments, and determine an arbitrator’s fees. The Delaware Supreme Court can hear appeals of awards. 

The DRAA appears to be encouraging a relatively fast and cost effective dispute resolution process. The process is limited to 180 days – final award to be issued within 120 days of the arbitrator’s appointment and allowable extensions up to an additional 60 days. 

Given the privacy and the apparent time and cost-savings, this may be an attractive alternative dispute resolution process for various businesses. 

For more analysis see:

David J. Berger (Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati)

Brian Quinn

“Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” — John Godfrey Saxe

This is a brief legislative update on the progress of Tennessee’s current bills, introduced in the house (HB0767–amendment not yet filed) and senate (SB0972), to institute the benefit corporation as a distinct for-profit business corporation in the State of Tennessee.  The links provided are to the current versions of the bill, which reflect a significant amendment, as described below.

As you may know from my prior posts (including here and here), I am a benefit corporation skeptic.  Please read those posts for details.  And within the Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) Business Law Section Executive Council and Business Entity Study Committee (our state bar committee that vets changes to Tennessee business associations and other business laws), I am not alone.  We have rejected bills of this kind several times over the past few years when the matter has been put to us for review by the TBA.  This year was no different.  We opposed the benefit corporation bills that were introduced in Tennessee this year, too.

What was different this time around, was that the folks at B Lab had gotten the attention of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Tennessee, who appear(ed) to have some misunderstandings about the current state of Tennessee corporate governance law and came to push for adoption of the bill in committee in both houses of the legislature. Given that we were late to the party and that the members of our TBA Council and Committee are very busy lawyers, our efforts to re-educate members of the relevant committees were not as effective as we would have liked.  But we ultimately were afforded two weeks to attempt to write an amended bill–one that better reflected Tennessee law and norms.

Now, any of you who have worked on a project like this before know that two weeks is not enough time to do a professionally responsible job in spotting and tracking down all of the issues that the introduction of a new business form routinely and naturally raises.  Heck.  We couldn’t even get all the constituents around the table that we would want around the table to debate and review the legislation in two weeks!  [It seems hardest to find a plaintiff’s bar lawyer to sit in with us, but we found a great one for our recent work on the Tennessee Business Corporation Act (TBCA).]  Our requests for more time to work on the proposed legislation were, however, rejected.

So, we set out to make a better sausage . . . .

It’s that time of year again where I have my business associations students pretend to be shareholders and draft proposals. I blogged about this topic last semester here. Most of this semester’s proposals related to environmental, social and governance factors. In the real world, a record 433 ESG proposals have been filed this year, and the breakdown as of mid-February was as follows according to As You Sow:

Environment/Climate Change- 27%

Political Activity- 26%

Human Rights/Labor-15%

Sustainability-12%

Diversity-9%

Animals-2%

Summaries of some of the student proposals are below (my apologies if my truncated descriptions make their proposals less clear): 

1) Netflix-follow the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the core standards of the International Labour Organization

2) Luxottica- separate Chair and CEO

3) DineEquity- issue quarterly reports on efforts to combat childhood obesity and the links to financial risks to the company

4) Starbucks- provide additional disclosure of risks related to declines in consumer spending and decreases in wages

5) Chipotle- issue executive compensation/pay disparity report

6) Citrix Systems-add board diversity

7) Dunkin Donuts- eliminate the use of Styrofoam cups

8) Campbell Soup- issue sustainability report

9) Shake Shack- issue sustainability report

10) Starbucks- separate…

For thirty years, I have had a pet peeve about the media’s routine reporting on mergers and acquisitions.  I have kept this to myself, for the most part, other than scattered comments to law practice colleagues and law students over the years.  Today, I go public with this veritable thorn in my side.

From many press reports (which commonly characterize business combinations as mergers), you would think that every business combination is structured as a merger.  I know I am being picky here (since there are both legal and non-legal common parlance definitions of the verb “merge”).  But a merger, to a business lawyer, is a particular form of business combination, to be distinguished from a stock purchase, asset purchase, consolidation, or statutory share exchange transaction.

The distinction is meaningful to business lawyers for whom the implications of deal type are well known.  However, imho, it also can be meaningful to others with an interest in the transaction, assuming the implications of the deal structure are understood by the journalist and conveyed accurately to readers.  For instance, the existence (or lack) of shareholder approval requirements and appraisal rights, the need for contractual consents, permit or license transfers or applications, or regulatory approvals, the tax treatment, etc. may differ based on the transaction structure.

Recently, I received the following conference announcement via e-mail:

———–

Understanding the Modern Company

Organised by the Department of Law, Queen Mary University of London,

in cooperation with University College London

Saturday 9 May 2015, 09.00 to 17.00

Centre for Commercial Law Studies

Queen Mary University of London

67-69 Lincoln’s Inn Fields

London WC2A 3JB

From their origin in medieval times to their modern incarnation as transnational bodies that traverse nations, the company remains an important, yet highly misunderstood entity. It is perhaps not surprising then that understanding what a company is and to whom it is accountable remains a persistent and enduring debate across the globe.

Today, the company is viewed in a variety, and often contradictory, ways. Some see it as a public body; others view it as a system of private ordering, while still others see it as a hybrid between these two views. Companies have also been characterized as the property of their shareholders, a network, a team, and even akin to a natural person. Yet the precise nature of the company and its role in society remain a modern mystery.

This conference brings together a wealth of scholars from around the world to explore the…

Amanda Rose (Vanderbilt) was one of the many distinguished speakers at the law and business conference I attended last week. She spoke about her forthcoming article in the Northwestern University Law Review, which focuses on the SEC’s new whistleblower program in relation to Fraud- on-the-Market class action lawsuits. I have added her article to my reading list and the abstract is reproduced below for interested readers.

The SEC’s new whistleblower bounty program has provoked significant controversy. That controversy has centered on the failure of the implementing rules to make internal reporting through corporate compliance departments a prerequisite to recovery. This Article approaches the new program with a broader lens, examining its impact on the longstanding debate over fraud-on-the-market (FOTM) class actions. The Article demonstrates how the bounty program, if successful, will replicate the fraud deterrence benefits of FOTM class actions while simultaneously increasing the costs of such suits — rendering them a pointless yet expensive redundancy. If instead the SEC proves incapable of effectively administering the bounty program, the Article shows how amending it to include a qui tam provision for Rule 10b-5 violations would offer several advantages over retaining FOTM class actions. Either way, the bounty program has important

…

In connection with the current legislative debate on benefit corporations in Tennessee (which has been gathering momentum since I last wrote on the topic), I have repeatedly asked about the impetus for the bill.  Of course, there is the obvious “push” for benefit corporation legislation by the B Lab folks, who have gotten the ear of folks at the Chamber, convincing them that the legislation is needed in Tennessee to protect social enterprise entities from the application of a narrow version of the shareholder wealth maximization norm (a conclusion that I dispute in my earlier post).  But what else?  What real parties in interest in Tennessee, if any, have expressed a desire that Tennessee adopt this form of business entity?

There is anecdotal information from one venture attorney that some Tennessee entrepreneurs have indicated a preference for the benefit corporation form and have specifically requested that their business be organized as a Delaware benefit corporation.  Leaving aside the Delaware versus Tennessee question, why are these entrepreneurs looking to organize their businesses as benefit corporations?  Where does this idea come from?