Corporate Governance

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Two weeks ago I posted about whether small businesses, start ups, and entrepreneurs should consider corporate social responsibility as part of their business (outside of the benefit corporation context). Definitions of CSR vary but for the purpose of this post, I will adopt the US government’s description as:

entail[ing] conduct consistent with applicable laws and internationally recognised standards. Based on the idea that you can do well while doing no harm … a broad concept that focuses on two aspects of the business-society relationship: 1) the positive contribution businesses can make to economic, environmental, and social progress with a view to achieving sustainable development, and 2) avoiding adverse impacts and addressing them when they do occur.

During my presentation at USASBE, I admitted my cynical thoughts about some aspects of CSR, discussed the halo effect, and pointed out some statistics from various sources about consumer attitudes. For example:

  • Over 66% of people say they will pay more for products from a company with “good values”
  • 66% of survey respondents indicated that their perception of company’s CEO affected their perception of the company
  • 90% of US consumers would switch brands to one associated with a cause, assuming comparable price

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In early January, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Cent. Laborers’ Pension Fund v. Dimon to affirm the dismissal of purported shareholder derivative claims alleging that directors of JP Morgan Chase–the primary bankers of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (“BMIS”) for over 20 years–failed  to institute internal controls sufficient to detect Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.  The suit was dismissed for failures of demand excuse.  Plaintiffs contended that the District Court erred in requiring them to plead that defendants “utterly failed to implement any reporting or information system or controls,” and that instead, they should have been required to plead only defendants’ “utter failure to attempt to assure a reasonable information and reporting system exist[ed].” (emphasis added).  The Second Circuit declined, citing to In re General Motors Co. Derivative Litig., No. CV 9627-VCG, 2015 WL 3958724, at *14–15 (Del. Ch. June 26, 2015), a Chancery Court opinion from earlier this year that dismissed a Caremark/oversight liability claim.  In In re General Motors the Delaware Chancery Court, found that plaintiffs’ allegations that:

[T]he Board did not receive specific types of information do not establish that the Board utterly failed to attempt to assure a reasonable information and reporting system exists, particularly

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The AALS Annual meeting starts today in New York.  The full program is available here, and listed below are two Section meeting announcements of particular interest to business law scholars:

Thursday, January 7th from 1:30 pm – 3:15 pm the SECTION ON AGENCY, PARTNERSHIP, LLC’S AND UNINCORPORATED ASSOCIATIONS, COSPONSORED BY TRANSACTIONAL LAW AND SKILLS will meet in the Murray Hill East, Second Floor, New York Hilton Midtown for a program titled:

“Contract is King, But Can It Govern Its Realm?”  

The program will be moderated by Benjamin Means, University of South Carolina School of Law.  Discussants include:

  • Joan M. Heminway, University of Tennessee College of Law
  • Lyman P.Q. Johnson, Washington and Lee University School of Law
  • Mark J. Loewenstein, University of Colorado School of Law
  • Mohsen Manesh, University of Oregon School of Law
  • Sandra K. Miller, Professor, Widener University School of Business Administration, Chester, PA

BLPB hosted an online micro-symposium in advance of the Contract is King meeting.  The wrap up from this robust discussion is available here.

Friday January 8th, from 1:30 pm – 3:15 pm join the SECTION ON BUSINESS ASSOCIATIONS AND LAW
AND ECONOMICS JOINT PROGRAM at the Sutton South, Second Floor, New York Hilton Midtown for a program titled:

 “The Corporate …

Kent Greenfield recently published a provocative article with Democracy on ending Delaware’s dominance over corporate law.  As is Greenfield’s way, he makes a familiar story sound fresh and raises an interesting question.  Is it democratic for a state with less than 1% of the country’s population to have its laws control more than half of the Fortune 500 companies?  Greenfield says no.

Power without accountability has no democratic legitimacy. If companies could choose which state’s environmental, employment, or anti-discrimination law applied to them, we’d be outraged. We should be similarly outraged about Delaware’s dominance in corporate law.

Greenfield suggests two alternative paths for ending Delaware’s dominance.  First:  states could amend their business organization statutes so that the law of the state of incorporation (Delaware) doesn’t govern the corporation, rather the law of the principal place of business would.   Second, and perhaps more radically, nationalize corporate law.  

The undemocratic critique is an astute observation. It takes the debate outside of the “race to the bottom” standard trope and into territory with perhaps more broad public appeal.  Leaving aside the state competition for headquarters, tax base and jobs with solution one and potential political friction with solution two, both solutions address

On Saturday, January 9, 2016, I will be spending the day at the AALS Section on Socio-Economics Annual Meeting at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel.  Among other things, I will be part of a panel discussion from 9:50 – 10:50 AM, Death of the Firm: Vulnerabilities and the Changing Structure of Employment.  My co-panelists will be June Carbone and Katherine Stone (I am very tempted to give up my 15 minutes and just sit back and listen to these two great scholars, but please don’t use the comments section to encourage me to do that).  As I understand it, the gist of the discussion will be that while firms once supported a significant part of the safety net that provided employee health and retirement benefits, they have recently abdicated more and more of these responsibilities.  At the same time, however, what may be described as subsidies granted by the state to firms — particularly corporations — as part of a social contract whereby these firms provided the aforementioned benefits, have not been correspondingly reduced.  In fact, the rights of corporations have been expanded by, for example, cases like Citizens United and Hobby Lobby — suggesting a possible windfall…

This is the time of year when many people make New Year’s resolutions, and I suppose that law professors do so as well. I’m taking a break from teaching business associations next semester. Instead, I will teach Business and Human Rights as well as Civil Procedure II. I love Civ Pro II because my twenty years of litigation experience comes in handy when we go through discovery. I focus a lot on ethical issues in civil procedure even though my 1Ls haven’t taken professional responsibility because I know that they get a lot of their context from TV shows like Suits, in which a young “lawyer” (who never went to law school) has a photographic memory and is mentored by a very aggressive senior partner whose ethics generally kick in just in the nick of time. It will also be easy to talk about ethical issues in business and human rights. What are the ethical, moral, financial, and societal implications of operating in countries with no regard for human rights and how should that impact a board’s decision to maximize shareholder value? Can socially-responsible investors really make a difference and when and how should they use their influence? Those…

OK.  No more complaining about grading–at least for another few months.  Whew!  I think I am getting too old for this crazy few weeks in December that involve holiday preparations and reading for the purpose of assessment.

This week, as I promised last week, I do want to say a bit more about the exams themselves, however.  I noticed certain patterns of wrong answers this year (some of them common to ones noted in prior years that I have tried in various ways–unsuccessfully–to address in my teaching).  I sent a message to my students that captured those common mistakes.  An edited list of the observations I shared with them about those errors is included below.

  • Management/Control vs. Agency.  Management and control as an entity attribute is not the same as agency. The former involves internal governance–who among the internal constituents of the firm has the power to exercise the firm’s rights and keep it operating, from a legal (and practical) point of view. The latter relates to the firm’s liability to third parties. These two matters are set forth in different rules in each statute we covered in our course last semester. In the corporation, for example–the most complicated firm we studied,

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The Pep Boys – Manny, Moe & Jack (NYSE:  PBY) merger triangle with Bridgestone Retail Operations LLC and Icahn Enterprises LP is proving to be an exciting bidding war.  The price and the pace of competing bids has been escalating since the proposed Pep Boys/Bridgestone agreement was announced on October 16, 2015.  Pep Boys stock had been trading around $12/share. Pursuant to the agreement, Bridgestone commenced a tender offer in November for all outstanding shares at $15.  

Icahn Enterprises controls Auto Plus, a competitor of Pep Boys, the nation’s leading automotive aftermarket service and retail chain.  Icahn disclosed an approximately 12% stake in Pep Boys earlier in December and entered into a bidding war with Bridgestone over Pep Boys.  The price climbed to $15.50 on December 11th, then $17.00 on December 24th. Icahn Enterprises holds the current winning bid at $18.50/share, which the Pep Boys Board of Directors determined is a superior offer.  In the SEC filings, Icahn Enterprises indicated a willingness to increase the bid, but not if Pep Boys agreed to Bridgestone’s increased termination fee (from $35M to 39.5M) triggered by actions such as perior proposals by third parties.  Icahn challenged such a fee as a serious threat to…

A year ago today, President Obama shocked the world and enraged many in Congress by announcing normalization of relations with Cuba. A lot of the rest of the United States didn’t see this as much of a big deal, but here in Miami, ground zero for the Cuban exile community, this was a cataclysmic event. Now Miami is one of the biggest sources of microfinance for the island.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have been writing about the ethical and governance issues of doing business with the island since my 10-day visit last summer. I return to Cuba today on a second research trip to validate some of my findings for my second article on governance and compliance risks and to begin work on my third article related to rule of law issues, the realities of foreign direct investment and arbitration, what a potential bilateral or multilateral investment agreement might look like, and the role that human rights requirements in these agreements could play.

This is an interesting time to be visiting Cuba. The Venezuelan government, a large source of income for Cuba has suffered a humiliating defeat. Will this lead to another “special period” for the…

Divestment campaigns have been a popular form of corporate activism.  With divestment pensions, institutions, endowments and funds withdraw investments from companies to encourage and promote certain social/political behaviors and policies. 

Erik Hendey in his article Does Divestment Work (in the Harvard Political Review) recounted recent divestment campaigns including: 

“sweatshop labor, use of landmines, and tobacco advertising. But undoubtedly the best known example of divestment occurred in the 1970s and ’80s in response to the apartheid regime of South Africa. Retirement funds, mutual funds, and investment institutions across the country sold off the stocks of companies that did business in South Africa.”

A current divestment campaign is focused on guns.  In the wake of the San Bernardino, California mass shooting, this issue is poised to gain momentum.  The widespread investment in gun manufacturers will also make this campaign relevant to many investors. Andrew Ross Sorkin at the NYT DealBook writes in Guns in Your 401(k)? The Push to Divest Grows:

“If you own any of the broad index funds or even a target-date retirement fund, you’ve got a stake in the gun industry. Investments in gun makers, at least over the past five years, have performed well. Shares of Smith & Wesson

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