Corporations

Subscribe to Corporations via RSS

I’m starting to think that courts are playing the role of Lucy to my Charlie Brown, and proper description of LLCs is the football.  In follow up to my post last Friday, I went looking for a case that makes clear that an LLC’s status as a disregarded entity for IRS tax purposes is insufficient to support veil piercing.  And I found one.  The case explains:

Plaintiff . . . failed to provide any case law supporting his theory of attributing liability to Aegis LLC because of the existence of a pass-through tax structure of a disregarded entity. Pl.’s Opp’n. [50]. Between 2006 and 2008, when 100% of Aegis LLC’s shares were owned by Aegis UK, Aegis LLC was treated as a disregarded entity by the IRS and the taxable income earned by Aegis LLC was reflected in federal and District of Columbia tax returns filed by Aegis UK. Day Decl. Oct. 2012 [48–1] at ¶ 37. In the case of a limited liability corporation with only one owner, the limited liability corporation must be classified as a disregarded entity. 26 C.F.R. § 301.7701–2(c)(2). Instead of filing a separate tax return for the limited liability corporation, the owner would

…

Understandably, business law professors get upset when people who should know better- judges for example- mischaracterize LLCs. I say we should be even more angry at the law clerks drafting the opinions. Many judges had no exposure to LLCs in law school but clerks graduating today certainly have. 
 
Given the ubiquity of LLCs now, I was surprised to learn that among the many outstanding CALI (Computer-Aided Legal Instruction) lessons, there are none on LLCs. (Hat tip to co-blogger Steve Bradford- my students love him now). I have volunteered to work on at least one and maybe more in the coming months. I canvassed some colleagues for their must-haves for these LLC lessons. In no particular order, here’s the current list:
 

1) Difference between LLCs, corporations and partnerships 

2) Del. and ULLCA coverage of fiduciary duties, and especially the issue of contractual waiver and default 

3) Ease of formation
 
4) Expense of formation
 
5) Ease of maintenance    
 
6) Expense of maintenance
 
7) Restrictions re. business purpose or activity
 
8) Continuity of life/limitations on existence
 
9) Label for/characteristics (incl. transferability) of ownership interests
 
10) Restrictions re. owners (number, type, or other)
 
11) Authority to

…

I have previously blogged about Institutional Shareholder Services’ policy survey and noted that a number of business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, had significant concerns. In case you haven’t read Steve Bainbridge’s posts on the matter, he’s not a fan either. 

Calling the ISS consultation period “a decision in search of a process,” the Chamber released its comment letter to ISS last week, and it cited Bainbridge’s comment letter liberally. Some quotable quotes from the Chamber include:

Under ISS’ revised policy, according to the Consultation, “any single factor that may have previously resulted in a ‘For’ or ‘Against’ recommendation may be mitigated by other positive or negative aspects, respectively.” Of course, there is no delineation of what these “other positive or negative aspects” may be, how they would be weighted, or how they would be applied. This leaves public companies as well as ISS’ clients at sea as to what prompted a determination that previously would have seen ISS oppose more of these proposals. This is a change that would, if enacted, fly in the face of explicit SEC Staff Guidance on the obligations to verify the accuracy and current nature of information utilized in formulating voting recommendations.

The…

Back in 2010, Art Durnev published a short paper, The Real Effects of Political Uncertainty: Elections and Investment Sensitivity to Stock Prices, available here.  The article studies the interaction between national elections and corporate investment.  Today is not a national election — we get two more years before we have to choose our next president — but it’s still seems like an apt day to think about the role of elections on corporate activity.

The most interesting part of the article, to me anyway, is the test of the relationship between political uncertainty and firm performance. As the article explains, 

If prices reflect future profitability of investment projects, investment-to-price sensitivity can be interpreted as a measure of the quality of capital allocation. This is because if capital is  allocated efficiently, capital is withdrawn from sectors with poor prospects and invested in profitable sectors. Thus, if political uncertainty reduces investment efficiency, firm performance is likely to suffer. Consistent with this argument, we show that firms that experience a drop in investment-to-price sensitivity during election years perform worse over the two years following elections.

The conclusion: this signifies that political uncertainty significantly impacts real economic outcomes.  Therefore, “political uncertainty can deteriorate company performance because…

On Monday, The University of Tennessee (UT) College of Law hosted Larry Cunningham to talk about his book, Berkshire Beyond Buffett: The Enduring Value of Values, which he previewed with us here on the BLPB a few months ago in a series of posts (here, here, and here).  As you may recall, the book focuses on corporate culture and succession planning at Berkshire Hathaway.  Joining Larry at the book session was UT College of Law alumnus James L. (Jim) Clayton, Chairman and principal shareholder of Clayton Bank and the founder of Clayton Homes, one of the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries featured in the book.  The impromptu conversation between Larry and Jim was an incredible part of the event (although Larry’s prepared presentation on the book also was great).

As part of the event, Larry and Jim answered a variety of  audience questions.  Included among them was a question from UT College of Law Dean Doug Blaze on the role of lawyers in management,  transactions, and entrepreneurialism.  As part of Jim Clayton’s response, he noted the value of preventative lawyering–advising businesses to keep them out of trouble.  I was so glad, as a business law advisor…

 

 

Miriam Schwartz-Ziv from Michigan State University and Russ Wermers from the University of Maryland have written an interesting article in time for the next proxy season. The abstract is below:

This paper investigates the voting patterns of shareholders on the recently enacted “Say-On-Pay” (SOP) for publicly traded corporations, and the efficacy of vote outcomes on rationalizing executive compensation. We find that small shareholders are more likely than large shareholders to use the non-binding SOP vote to govern their companies: small shareholders are more likely to vote for a more frequent annual SOP vote, and more likely to vote “against” SOP (i.e., to disapprove executive compensation). Further, we find that low support for management in the SOP vote is more likely to be followed by a decrease in excess compensation, and by a more reasonable selection of peer companies for determining compensation, when ownership is more concentrated. Hence, the non-binding SOP vote offers a convenient mechanism for small shareholders to voice their opinions, yet, larger shareholders must be present to compel the Board to take action. Thus, diffuse shareholders are able to coordinate on the SOP vote to employ the threat that large shareholders represent to management.

In addition to the two letters Anne Tucker mentioned earlier, Lyman Johnson (Washington & Lee and University of St. Thomas) has now organized another group of legal scholars to respond to the HHS post-Hobby Lobby Rules. The Johnson letter is available here.

As Stephen Bainbridge (one of the authors) notes, Lyman Johnson brought together a group of scholars with diverse views for this letter. The letter is worth reading and the abstract is provide below.

In late August 2014, after suffering a defeat in the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision when the Court held that business corporations are “persons” that can “exercise religion,” the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) proposed new rules defining “eligible organizations.” Purportedly designed to accommodate the Hobby Lobby ruling, the proposed rules do not comport with the reasoning of that important decision and they unjustifiably seek to permit only a small group of business corporations to be exempt from providing contraceptive coverage on religious grounds. This comment letter to the HHS about its proposed rules makes several theoretical and practical points about the Hobby Lobby holding and how the proposed rules fail to reflect the Court’s reasoning. The letter also addresses other

…

My co-blogger Stefan Padfield passed along this article from The New York Times Dealbook on the social network Ello.

Ello is a Delaware public benefit corporation. The social enterprise terminology is proving difficult, even for sophisticated authors at the New York Times Dealbook. The article calls Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s public benefit corporations. Patagonia, however, is a California benefit corporation. I wrote about the differences between public benefit corporations and benefit corporations here. Ben & Jerry’s is a certified B corporation, but, as far as I know, Ben & Jerry’s has not yet made the legal change to convert to any of the social enterprise forms. I wrote about the differences between benefit corporations and certified B corporations here and here. Just as my co-blogger Joshua Fershee remains vigilant at pointing out the differences between LLCs and corporations, so I will remain vigilant on the social enterprise distinctions. 

Besides my nitpicking on the use of social enterprise terminology, there are a few other things I want to say about this article.     

First, Ello raised $5.5 million dollars, which is not that much money in the financial world, but puts Ello in…

I used to joke that my alma mater Columbia University’s core curriculum, which required students to study the history of art, music, literature, and philosophy (among other things) was designed solely to make sure that graduates could distinguish a Manet from a Monet and not embarrass the university at cocktail parties for wealthy donors. I have since tortured my son by dragging him through museums and ruins all over the world pointing spouting what I remember about chiaroscuro and Doric columns. He’s now a freshman at San Francisco Art Institute, and I’m sure that my now-fond memories of class helped to spark a love of art in him. I must confess though that as a college freshman I was less fond of  Contemporary Civilization class, (“CC”) which took us through Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Hume, Hegel, and all of the usual suspects. At the time I thought it was boring and too high level for a student who planned to work in the gritty city counseling abused children and rape survivors.

Fast forward twenty years or so, and my job as a Compliance and Ethics Officer for a Fortune 500 company immersed me in many of the principles…

Mohsen Manesh (Oregon) has posted a new article entitled Nearing 30, Is Revlon Showing Its Age?  I have read a fair number of Mohsen’s articles and am consistently impressed.

The abstract reads:

Nearly thirty years ago, in Revlon, Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc., the Delaware Supreme Court famously dictated that in certain transactions involving a “sale or change in control,” the fiduciary obligation of a corporation’s board of directors is simply to “get[] the best price for the stockholders.” Applying a novel remedial perspective to this iconic doctrine, in The Dwindling of Revlon, Professor Lyman Johnson and Robert Ricca argue that Revlon is today of diminishing significance. In the three decades since, the coauthors observe, corporate law has evolved around Revlon, dramatically limiting the remedial clout of the doctrine. In this Essay, I show how two recent Delaware Chancery Court decisions — Chen v. Howard-Andersen and In re Rural Metro — underscore the expansive reach of Revlon and, therefore, the limits of Johnson and Ricca’s thesis. Instead, I suggest the dwindling of Revlon, if it is indeed dwindling, may be best observed from what is happening outside the pressed edges of corporate law, where other competing bodies of

…