Corporations

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According to its website,

The U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has a three-part mission:

  • Protect investors

  • Maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets

  • Facilitate capital formation

I think it needs to add: “Ensure proper entity identification.” 

Examples abound. Take this recent 10-Q:

On June 27, 2018, the Company formed a joint venture with Downtown Television, Inc., for the purpose of developing, producing and marketing entertainment content relating to deep-sea exploration, historical shipwreck search, artifact recovery, and expounding upon the history of these shipwrecks.  The joint venture is being formed as a new limited liability corporation that will be 50% owned each by EXPL and Downtown, and has been named Megalodon Entertainment, LLC. (“Megalodon”), as is further described in Note B. 

Endurance Exploration Group, Inc., SEC 10-Q, for the quarterly period ended: June 30, 2018 (emphasis added). 

Side note: That 10-Q, I will note, raised some other questionable decisionmaking, as it goes on to report: 

NOTE B – JOINT VENTURE

EXPL Swordfish, LLC

Effective January 9, 2017, the Company, through a newly formed, wholly owned subsidiary, EXPL Swordfish, LLC (“EXPL Swordfish”), entered into a joint-venture agreement (“Agreement”) with Deep Blue Exploration, LLC, d/b/a Marex (“Marex”).  The joint venture between

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We’re a month away from our second annual Business Law Professor Blog CLE, hosted at the University of Tennessee on Friday, September 14, 2018. We’ll discuss our latest research and receive comments from UT faculty and students. I’ve entitled my talk Beyond Bitcoin: Leveraging Blockchain for Corporate Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Enterprise Risk Management, and will blog more about that after I finish the article. This is a really long post, but it’s chock full of helpful links for novices and experts alike and highlights some really interesting work from our colleagues at other law schools.

Two weeks ago, I posted some resources to help familiarize you with blockchain. Here’s a relatively simple definition from John Giordani at Forbes:

Blockchain is a public register in which transactions between two users belonging to the same network are stored in a secure, verifiable and permanent way. The data relating to the exchanges are saved inside cryptographic blocks, connected in a hierarchical manner to each other. This creates an endless chain of data blocks — hence the name blockchain — that allows you to trace and verify all the transactions you have ever made. The primary function of a…

It’s not just judges and lawyers. Big banks, too, are apparently not committed to clear and accurate language when it comes to LLCs (limited liability companies).  A recent antitrust case provides an excerpt from a Barclays Settlement Agreement that states:

Paragraph 2(cc) of the Barclays Settlement Agreement defines “Person” as: “An individual, corporation, limited liability corporation, professional corporation, limited liability partnership, partnership, limited partnership, association, joint stock company, estate, legal representative, trust, unincorporated association, municipality, state, state agency, any entity that is a creature of any state, any government or any political subdivision, authority, office, bureau or agency of any government, and any business or legal entity, and any spouses, heirs, predecessors, successors, representatives, or assignees of the foregoing.” Barclays Settlement Agreement ¶ 2(cc).

In re LIBOR-Based Fin. Instruments Antitrust Litig., No. 11 CIV. 5450, 2018 WL 3677875, at *20 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 1, 2018) (emphasis added). 
 
I checked to see if this was the court’s error, but I found a link to what appears to be the settlement agreement, and it, too, includes “limited liability corporation” in paragraph (cc)’s definition.  Given that it is an error in the original, the judge, or at least the

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The Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Meeting is upon us. If you are free from 9-11 AM this coming Saturday, Aug. 11, please stop by our discussion group on The Role of Corporate Personhood in Masterpiece Cakeshop. Don’t worry about the fact that SCOTUS ignored the personhood issue — we’ll have plenty to talk about.

Here is a summary of the program:

In the United States Supreme Court case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the issue presented is: “Whether applying Colorado’s public accommodations law to compel the petitioner to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the free speech or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment.” A group of corporate law professors has filed an amicus brief in support of the CCRC. One of the arguments in that brief is: “Because Of The Separate Legal Personality Of Corporations And Shareholders, The Constitutional Interests Of Shareholders Should Not Be Projected Onto The Corporation.” This discussion group features a dialogue on the pros and cons of this argument, together with related analysis and observations.

I’ll be moderating, and here is a list of dicussants:

Professor Eric Chaffee, University…

Pura vida from Costa Rica. Between recovery from carpal tunnel surgery a few weeks ago and an ATV flip two days ago, I don’t have much mental or physical energy to do a full post. I haven’t mastered dictation so I’m typing this on an iPad with one hand. Next week, I’ll provide more substance as well as a preview on my September talk at our second annual BPLB symposium at the University of Tennessee. Today, I want to pass on some resources for those who don’t know anything about blockchain. 

For those who want to provide resources for students, Walter Effross has put together a great site:

Ten Reasons for Blockchain Law Literacy

The following sources come from Professor Tonya Evans at UNH, who has developed an online curriculum on blockchain:

Use Cases: 

https://medium.com/fluree/blockchain-for-2018-and-beyond-a-growing-list-of-blockchain-use-cases-37db7c19fb99

https://www.mycryptopedia.com/16-promising-blockchain-use-cases/

Education:

https://medium.com/universablockchain/blockchain-in-education-49ad413b9e12

Blockchain + Law:

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/lawyers_can_contribute_to_the_rise_of_blockchain_by_understanding_it

https://abovethelaw.com/2018/02/blockchain-can-smart-contracts-replace-lawyers/

Bitcoin And Blockchain: What Lawyers Need To Know

Next week, I’ll talk about my research into how blockchain is used in corporate governance, compliance, supply chain management, enterprise risk management, cybersexurity, and human rights. 

SnapchatLogo

One of the business law academy’s power couples, Amy and Bert Westbrook, recently posted an intriguing piece on SSRN that Bert and I have been communicating about a bit this summer.  It is entitled Snapchat’s Gift: Equity Culture in High-Tech Firms, and it is, indeed, a lovely gift–well conceived and packaged.  It is a look at dual class common equity in technology firms–and equity more generally–that confronts and incorporates many perspectives from law, economics, and other social sciences.

Some of you, like me, teach basic corporate finance in a variety of courses.  In those situations, it is important for instructors to have a handle on descriptions of the basic instruments of corporate finance–debt, equity, hybrid, and other.  What is the package of rights each instrument represents that incentivizes investors to supply money or other valuable assets?  In my classes, we ultimately discuss equity as a bundle of rights that includes potentials for financial gain and governance.  Snapchat’s Gift digs into the validity of these perceived rights in relevant part by focusing on recent changes in the primary public offering market for equity securities in the United States–in particular, the advent of highly publicized and fully subscribed initial public offerings of nonvoting common shares.

An Illinois appellate court decision that was just made available on Westlaw provides some revealing insight into Hydra, the longtime source of evil that many recognize from Captain America: The First Avenger. 

Hydra stated that Hydra’s manager is Ahuva Horowitz, defendant’s wife, and that she owns 100% of the membership interests of Hydra a limited liability corporation.

Xcel Supply LLC v. Horowitz, 2018 IL App (1st) 162986, ¶ 14, 100 N.E.3d 557, 561, reh’g denied (Mar. 9, 2018) (emphasis added). 

First, let’s correct the record: Hydra is listed as an LLC, a limited liability company. It is not a corporation.  

Second, I should also note, after further review, it’s not really THAT Hydra. It is apparently not this one:

In a prehuman time, a cabal of cold-blooded alien reptiles arrived on Earth, planning to start a legacy of evil. They planted the seed that would later gave birth to future evil empires. 

So, instead, the instant Hydra is Hydra Properties, LLC, which came into existence in 2009. That makes more sense, but it’s a lot less interesting.  

Still, either way, and for either Hydra, if it’s Hydra LLC, it’s not a corporation.

Bernard Sharfman has posted Dual Class Share Voting versus the “Empty Voting” of Mutual Fund Advisors’ and it is an interesting read.  He argues: 

Dual class shares (shares with unequal voting rights) arise when the board of directors of a company decides to raise capital through the sale of newly issued shares, but wants one or more insiders, who may be giving up economic control through the issuance of the shares, to retain voting control in the company.  Typically, this occurs in an initial public offering (IPO), but it can also occur before.  In an IPO, a company will usually issue a class of common stock to the public that carries one vote per share (ordinary shares), while reserving a separate class, a super-voting class, that provide insiders with at least 10 votes per share.  However, both types of shares will have equal rights to the cash flow of the company.  The issuance of dual class shares may create a wide gap between voting and cash flow rights over time, especially if the insiders periodically sell a significant amount of their ordinary shares.

But this is the critical point.  A dual class share structure cannot exist without the permission of

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Bernie Sharfman’s paper, A Private Ordering Defense of a Company’s Right to Use Dual Class Share Structures in IPOs, was just published, and I think he has a point. In fact, as I read his argument, I think it is consistent with arguments I have made about the difference between restrictions or unconventional terms or practices that exist at purchase versus such changes that are added after one becomes a member or shareholder.  Here’s the abstract: 

The shareholder empowerment movement (movement) has renewed its effort to eliminate, restrict or at the very least discourage the use of dual class share structures in initial public offerings (IPOs). This renewed effort was triggered by the recent Snap Inc. IPO that utilized non-voting stock. Such advocacy, if successful, would not be trivial, as many of our most valuable and dynamic companies, including Alphabet (Google) and Facebook, have gone public by offering shares with unequal voting rights.

Unless there are significant sunset provisions, a dual class share structure allows insiders to maintain voting control over a company even when, over time, there is both an ebbing of superior leadership skills and a significant decline in the insiders’ ownership of the company’s common stock.

Earlier this week, Keith Paul Bishop observed on his blog, “Professor Joshua Fershee has been fighting the good fight on limited liability company nomenclature, but I fear that he is losing.”   I am not willing to concede that I am losing (yet), but I have to concede that I am winning less often than I’d hoped.  

Bishop noted my “helpful checklist” from last week for those writing about LLCs, but he argues, “it may be time to give up the fight and bestow an entirely new name on LLCs that is less likely to be confused with corporations. I am still not ready to give up the fight, but it is an interesting thought, and there are some options.

One path I have proposed before that I think would help: Let Corps Be Corps: Follow-Up on Entity Tax Status.  In that post, I suggested that the IRS should just stop using state-law entity designations, and thus stop having “corporate” tax treatment. I explained:

My proposal is not abolishing corporate tax . . . .  Instead, the proposal is to have entities choose from options that are linked the Internal Revenue Code, and not to

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