Corporate Governance

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Last week I posted about proxy advisory firm ISS and its recommendations regarding Wal-Mart and Target.

This week the US Chamber of Commerce weighed in on the two main proxy advisory firms, what the organization sees as their potential conflict of interests and the lack of transparency, and the SEC’s imminent release of guidance on the firms. It’s worth a read and has some great links.

Next week I will be blogging from Salvador, Brazil where I will be enjoying the World Cup. I will post a brief recap of some of the business-related Law and Society sessions I attended in Minneapolis last weekend. With all of the controversy that invariably surrounds a large sporting event in a country that scores high on the corruption perception index, I may even be inspired to write a law review article on the FCPA. 

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has always had a lot of influence – some think too much- and it’s also received quite a bit of press this week. First, the Wall Street Journal reported that the proxy advisory firm slammed Wal-Mart’s board for lack of independence regarding its executive pay practices in particular how compensation is (un)affected by declining company performance. ISS also raised concerns about the company’s ongoing FCPA troubles and how or whether executives will be held accountable. ISS called for more board independence. Given the fact that the Walton family owns 50% of the company stock, it’s not likely that ISS’ recommendations will have much weight, but it’s still noteworthy nonetheless.

This morning, the press reported that ISS took aim at another troubled company, Target. In addition to its revenue declines, Target also reported a massive data breach last year, which led to numerous shareholder derivative suits. ISS recommended that seven of the ten board members lose their seats for failing to adequately monitor the risk. Target has already made a number of significant management changes. This recommendation from ISS may be an even bigger wake up call to board members (including those outside of Target) about…

Tomorrow kicks off the 2014 Law & Society Annual meeting in Minneapolis, MN.  Law & Society is a big tent conference that includes legal scholars of all areas, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and the list goes on and on.  A group of female corporate law scholars, of which I am a part, organizes several corporate-law panels. The result is that we have a mini- business law conference of our own each year.  Below is a preview of the schedule…please join us for any and all panels listed below.

Thursday 5/29

Friday 5/30

Saturday 5/31

8:15-10:00

0575 Corp Governance & Locus of Power

U. St. Thomas MSL 458

Participants: Tamara Belinfanti, Jayne Barnard, Megan Shaner, Elizabeth Noweiki, and Christina Sautter

10:15-12:00

1412 Empirical Examinations of Corporate Law

U. St. Thomas MSL 458

Participants: Elisabeth De Fontenay, Connie Wagner, Lynne Dallas, Diane Dick & Cathy Hwang

12:45-2:30

1468 Theorizing Corp. Law

U. St. Thomas MSL 458

Participants: Elizabeth Pollman, Sarah Haan, Marcia Narine, Charlotte Garden, and Christyne Vachon

1:00 Business Meeting Board Rm 3

2:45-4:30

Roundtable on SEC Authority

View Abstract 2967

Participants: Christyne Vachon, Elizabeth Pollman, Joan Heminway, Donna Nagy, Hilary Allen

1473 Emerging International Questions in

…

Brett McDonnell (Minnesota) recently posted a new article entitled Committing to Doing Good and Doing Well: Fiduciary Duty in Benefit Corporations.  I have not read the article yet, but it is printed and in my stack for the summer.  The abstract is below. 

Can someone running a business do good while doing well? Can they benefit society and the environment while still making money? Supporters of social enterprises believe the answer is yes, as these companies aim at both making money for shareholders while also pursuing other social benefits. Since 2010, states have begun to enact statutes creating the “benefit corporation” as a new legal form designed to fit social enterprises. Benefit corporations proclaim to the world that they will pursue both social good and profits, and those who run them have a fiduciary duty to consider a broad range of social interests as they make their decisions rather than a duty to focus solely on increasing shareholder value. Does this novel fiduciary duty effectively commit these businesses to doing good? How will courts actually apply this duty in practice? Will this new duty accomplish its goals without unduly high costs?

This article is among the first to

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Earlier this week, Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance released a study entitled “How Investment Horizon and Expectations of Shareholder Base Impact Corporate Decision-Making.” Not surprisingly, the 138 North American investor relations professionals surveyed prefer long-term investors so that management can focus on strategic decisionmaking without the distraction of “short-term performance pressures that come from active traders,” according to Professor David F. Larcker. Companies believed that attracting the “ideal” shareholder base could lead to an increase in stock price and a decrease in volatility.

The average “long-term investor” held shares for 2.8 years while short-term investors had an investment horizon of 7 months or less.  Pension funds, top management and corporate directors held investments the longest, and companies indicated that they were least enamored of hedge funds and private equity investors.  Those surveyed had an average of 8% of their shares held by hedge funds and believed that 3% would be an ideal percentage due to the short-termism of these investors. Every investor relations professional surveyed who had private equity investment wanted to see the ownership level down to zero.

I wonder what AstraZeneca’s investor relations team would have said if they could have participated in the survey given…

Proxy issues are an interesting gauge of current and emerging corporate governance issues.  Even if the proposals don’t pass, they provide a tool to take investors’ and companies’ temperature on controversial issues.  Alliance Advisors issued a detailed report on 2014 proxy season trends and expectations, which is available for download here.  A few highlights are discussed below.

  • Majority Voting. A trend towards majority voting proposals with support from ISS and Vanguard means that many companies will be facing pressure to consider changes to director elections.
  • Declassified Boards.  While the Harvard Law School Shareholder Rights Project has been successful in obtaining declassification of 23 of 13 target companies, the academic and industry debate continues about the efficacy or harm of classified boards.  
  • Board Tenure & Diversity.  These initiatives seek to turn the tide against board compositions that are dominated by white men who hold director positions for extended periods of time.

“ISS’s fall policy survey revealed that 74% of investor respondents consider board service over 10 years to be problematic. Similarly, a recent academic study of S&P 1500 companies found that firm value peaks when average director tenure reaches nine years, and then drops off by as much

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1) I was not the only person who went to law school because I was terrified of math and accounting. Many of my students did too, which made teaching this required course much harder even after I explained to them how much accounting I actually had to understand as a litigator and in-house counsel.

2) I will always make class participation count toward the grade. Apparently paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for an education is not enough to make some students read their extremely expensive textbooks. A 20% class participation grade is a great incentive. Similarly, I will never allow laptops in the classroom. The subject matter is tough enough without the distraction of Instagram, Facebook and buying shoes on Zappos.

3) Students come to a required course with a wide range of backgrounds- some have never written a check and others have traded in stocks since they were teenagers and use Bitcoin. Teaching to the middle is essential.

4) As I suspected, when students are allowed to use an outline for an exam, they won’t study as hard or as thoroughly, and I will grade harder.

5) Never underestimate how little many students know about the…

Joe Leahy (South Texas) recently posted an early draft of an interesting article entitled Corporate Political Contributions as Bad Faith.  He would appreciate any comments readers care to share with him.  The abstract is included below:

A shareholder who files a derivative lawsuit to challenge a corporate political contribution faces long odds, particularly when the shareholder sues under traditional theories for breach of the duty of loyalty, such as waste or self-dealing. However, there is a better theory for a shareholder to employ when filing such a lawsuit: bad faith. Bad faith is a better basis for challenging a corporate political contribution than either waste or self-dealing because bad faith is a more flexible concept than self-dealing and a less difficult standard to satisfy than waste. Even if she intends no harm, a director acts in bad faith when she (1) takes official action that is motivated primarily by any reason other than advancing the corporation’s best interests or (2) consciously disregards her fiduciary duties.

This Article identifies several examples of political contributions – both real and hypothetical – that are ripe for challenge as bad faith because they are made for reasons other than advancing the corporation’s

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In the comments to one of Anne Tucker’s earlier posts, I mentioned that Chris Bruner’s book Corporate Governance in the Common-Law World (2013 Cambridge University Press) was on my summer reading list.

Looks like I am a little late to the party.  Over at PrawfsBlawg, there is already a book club on Bruner’s book with a number of excellent posts, including a few by the author.  Maybe the book club inspired demand is one of the reasons I got a letter from Cambridge University Press yesterday letting me know that my copy of Bruner’s book was going to take longer to deliver than expected.

Looking forward to reading the actual book, but for now, the posts make interesting reading.   

Last week I blogged about enterprise risk management,  lawyers, and their “obligations” to counsel clients about human rights risks based in part on statements by the American Bar Association and Marty Lipton of Wachtell, who have cited the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. I posted the blog on a few LinkedIn groups and received some interesting responses from academics, in house counsel, consultants, and outside counsel, which leads me to believe that this is fertile ground for discussion. I have excerpted some of the comments below:

 “Corporations do have risk with respect to human rights violations, and this risk needs to be managed in a thoughtful manner that respects human dignity. I did wonder, though, whether you see any possible unintended consequences of asking attorneys to start advising on moral as well as legal rights?”

“I agree. Great post. Lawyers should always be ready to advise on both legal risks and what I call “propriety”. If a lawyer cannot scan for both risks, then he or she is either incompetent or has integrity issues. Companies that choose to take advice from a lawyer who is incompetent or has integrity issues probably have integrity issues too. I’m…