Research/Scholarhip

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Earlier today, I submitted a book chapter with the same title as this blog post.  The chapter, written for an international management resource on Digital Entrepreneurship and the Sharing Economy, represents part of a project on crowdfunding and poverty that I have been researching and thinking through for a bit over two years now.  My chapter abstract follows:

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and created economic hardship all over the world.  The United States is no exception.  Among other things, the economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis deepen pre-existing concerns about financing U.S. businesses formed and promoted by entrepreneurs of modest means.

In May 2016, a U.S. federal registration exemption for crowdfunded securities offerings came into existence (under the CROWDFUND Act) as a means of helping start-ups and small businesses obtain funding.  In theory, this regime was an attempt to fill gaps in U.S. securities law that handicapped entrepreneurs and their promoters from obtaining equity, debt, and other financing through the sale of financial investment instruments over the Internet.  The use of the Internet for business finance is particularly important to U.S. entrepreneurs who may not have access to funding because of their own limited financial and economic positions.…

I recently had occasion to offer background to, and be interviewed by, a local television reporter about a publicly traded firm that owns several health care facilities in East Tennessee and has been financed significantly through loans from and corporate payments made by a member of its board of directors.  The resulting article and news clip can be found here.  Since the story was published, a Form 8-K was filed reporting that the director has resigned from the board and the firm is negotiating with him to cancel its indebtedness in exchange for preferred stock.

In reviewing published reports on the firm, Rennova Health, Inc., I learned that it had been delisted from NASDAQ back in 2018.  The reason?  The firm engaged in too many stock splits.

I also came across an article reporting that another health care firm, a middle Tennessee skilled nursing provider, Diversicare Healthcare Services, Inc., had been delisted in late 2019.  The same article noted two additional middle Tennessee health care firms also were in danger of being delisted from stock exchanges.  One was subsequently delisted. 

Health care mergers and acquisitions also have been in the news here in Tennessee.  A Tennessee/Virginia…

I have a new(ish) essay that focuses on the concept of eliminating the fiduciary duty in an LLC, as permitted by Delaware law, and what that could mean for future parties. The paper can be found here (new link). When parties A and B get together to create an LLC, if they negotiate to eliminate their fiduciary agreements as to one another, I’m completely comfortable with that. They are negotiating for what they want; they are entering into that entity and operating agreement together of their own free will. So there may be differences in bargaining power—one may be wealthier than the other or have different kinds of power dynamics—but they are entering into this agreement fully aware of what the obligations are and what the options are for somebody in creating this entity.

My concern with eliminating fiduciary obligations comes down the road. That is, how do we make sure that if people are going to disclaim the fiduciary duty of loyalty, particularly, what happens if this change is made after formation? In such a case, I like to look at our traditional partnership law, which says there are certain kinds of decisions, at least absent an agreement to…

Call for Proposals – Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Corporate Law

DEADLINE: Friday November 1, 2019

The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project seeks contributors of rewritten judicial opinions and private contracts, and commentaries on rewritten opinions and contracts, for an edited collection tentatively titled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Corporate Law.  This edited volume is part of a collaboration among law professors and others to rewrite, from a feminist perspective, key judicial decisions in the United States.  The initial volume, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court, edited by Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, and Bridget J. Crawford, was published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press.  Cambridge University Press has approved a series of Feminist Judgments books. In 2017, Cambridge University Press published the tax volume titled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions. Other volumes in the pipeline include rewritten opinions in the areas of reproductive justice, family law, torts, employment discrimination, trusts and estates, and health law. More information about the project can be found at https://law.unlv.edu/us-feminist-judgments.

Corporate law volume editors are Anne Choike, Usha R. Rodrigues and Kelli Alces Williams. The corporate law volume’s advisory panel is comprised of Alina Ball; Lisa Fairfax; Theresa Gabaldon; Joan…

I am just back from the 2019 Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) conference.  I participated in several different kinds of activities this year.  This post reports out on each.

I first served as a participant in a series of discussion groups tailored to provide information to aspiring law professors.  The attendees included newly minted fellows and VAPs, mid-to-later-career lawyers/judges looking to switch to full-time law faculty (some already adjuncts or visitors), and (in general) law practitioners testing the waters for possible engagement with the Association of American Law Schools faculty recruitment process.  SEALS has served selected prospective law professors with a specialized track of preparative programming for a number of years.  This set of discussion groups represents an extension of that type of programming, on a more general informational level, to a wider audience of folks interested in careers in law teaching.

I also presented in a discussion group, sponsors by West Academic, on “Teaching to Engage.”  Steve Friesland of Elon Law moderated the session.  I shared some of my “first class” and assessment simulations for business law doctrinal and experiential courses.  I learned from many others who shared their own ways of engaging students.

Screenshot 2019-07-05 15.51.43

The dark side of entrepreneurial finance

Editors: Arvind Ashta, Olivier Toutain

Theme of the special issue

Whether we are talking about start-ups, more recently “grow up” or more broadly about company creation-takeover, entrepreneurial finance attracts a lot of attention, from the entrepreneurs’ side and from the side of private and public financing organisations and the media. Entrepreneurial finance includes Founder’s equity, Love Money, Business Angel, Venture Capital, LBO Funds, banks, IPOs and various alternative financing treated as shadow banking: micro-credit, loan sharking, leasing, crowdfunding, Initial Coin Offerings, among others (Block, Colombo, Cumming, & Vismara, 2018; Wright, Lumpkin, Zott, & Agarwal, 2016).

Financing is considered as an inherent dimension of the entrepreneurial development process (Panda, 2016; Yunus, 2003). Without financing, there is no investment and, therefore, little chance of starting a business with adequate production tools and an organization capable of absorbing the trials and tribulations of starting and developing entrepreneurial activities. Without funding, the risk of lack of legitimacy is also high: what does it mean in the entrepreneurial ecosystem not to have the support of one or more funding agencies? More so in the start-up world! Is that conceivable? Finally, can the entrepreneur now free himself from financial support, even if he does not really need it to start his business? If the reasoning is pursued further, does the entrepreneur have a choice? In other words, is it possible to create and develop your company without mobilizing the financial resources of the territory? Without entering into a financial system and ecosystem that regulates the creation and takeover of companies in a territory? Or a system that pushes the entrepreneur to finance so much that the system itself collapses by bringing forth a financial crisis (Boddy, 2011; Diamond & Rajan, 2009; Donaldson, 2012; Guérin, Labie, & Servet, 2015; Mishkin, 2011).

Applying for funding today is often considered as a difficult adventure: is it really a fighter’s path given the particularly numerous mechanisms in France? But are they also numerous in Europe? In the world? Is the cost of financing transparent or hidden (Attuel-Mendes & Ashta, 2013)? In any case, to adventure is to walk and remove obstacles while following a guide… often at the funder’s request… which is often called coaching or mentoring. Or following the guide, sometimes – or often, depending on the reader’s appreciation – results in respecting rules, imposed steps, in short, to adopt a good conduct… to such an extent that the entrepreneur can lose track of his North Star, or at least part of his project, modified by “pitching” and integrating the comments, suggestions, strong suggestions of potential funders… In other words, if we push the reflection further, the accompanying logic proposed in the form of good intentions by the funders of an ecosystem, are they not likely, by force, to respond to external constraints, to generate effects opposite to expectations: inhibited entrepreneurs, whose project has lost its originality, vitality and excellence through the coaching or mentoring of initially imagined value creation (Collewaert, 2009)? Isn’t the finance injected into the support systems finally a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of entrepreneurship? In other words, if it constitutes an unprecedented measure of support for entrepreneurial growth in the world, does it not at the same time generate “antipreneurial” effects? Normative and highly biased, do financial actors deserve such a place in the creative process? What is it that basically legitimizes their central place? (Bateman, 2010; Sinclair, 2012) What is the hidden face of entrepreneurial finance (Henderson & Pearson, 2011; Krohmer, Lauterbach, & Calanog, 2009; Toe, Hollandts, & Valiorgue, 2017)?

The purpose of this issue is to extract itself from the normative fields and discourses that highlight, in the vast majority of cases, the important role of finance in the development of entrepreneurship, whether purely economic, social or environmental. In other words, we are asking ourselves here about the secondary, even hidden, effects of finance on the emergence and development of new companies in France and around the world.

The proposals will address, among other things, the following topics:

  • What place does finance occupy today in the feeling of success and accomplishment of an entrepreneurial activity?
  • How do entrepreneurs interact with potential funders?
  • How do funders dialogue with each other?
  • How do funders make their investment decisions? Rationality, Short termism, information asymmetry….
  • How do entrepreneurs and funders negotiate? On which elements of the project or company? Are there any losers? What is lost in the process?
  • How does the relationship between entrepreneurs and funders change over time?
  • Can finance harm the value creation produced by entrepreneurial activity? Can it affect entrepreneurial freedom?
  • Is it possible to free oneself from financing circuits? How?

Finally, what is the dark side of entrepreneurial finance?

Timeline:

Submission of texts: By April 30, 2020 at the latest

Publication: March 2021

[I have omitted here the list of references supporting the text citations.  Please contact me by email if you would like a .pdf copy of the call for papers that includes the list.  There is more information after the jump.]

JillFisch(1)

Today, the 10th annual National Business Law Scholars Conference concluded.  Jill Fisch gave today’s keynote lecture at lunchtime.  She masterfully (really) tied together the scholarship of the far-and-away vast majority of the business law scholars attending the conference by weaving together corporate purpose, private ordering, and choice of entity.  In tying these themes together, she encouraged us all to use our scholarship to serve multiple audiences–including the judiciary, the law practice community, and industry.

This talk resonated with me from start to finish.  I was riveted.  I knew Jill was talking directly to me and so many others in the room who have plumbed the core of corporate governance and tried to address multiple audiences with our work.  She validated, and encouraged us to continue (and expand), our work in these somewhat unsettled (and sometimes unsettling!) areas of business law.

Take me for example (since I know myself best . . . ).  As Jill talked about corporate purpose, I heard her to be validating part of my article on Corporate Purpose and Litigation Risk in Publicly Held U.S. Benefit Corporations.  When she addressed private ordering, I understood her to be endorsing my observations on that subject (as…

Posted by request. Looks like a good event:

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Law and Ethics of Big Data
Hosted and Sponsored by:
Washington and Lee University School of Law
Lexington, Virginia

Co-Hosted by:
Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University; The Virginia Tech Center for Business Intelligence Analytics; The
Department of Business Law and Ethics, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University Bloomington

Wednesday-Thursday, April 24-25, 2019

Abstract Submission Deadline: Friday, March 1, 2019

We are pleased to announce the annual research colloquium, “Law and Ethics of Big Data,” which will be held this
year at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia. This year’s colloquium is co-hosted
by Associate Professor Margaret Hu at Washington and Lee University School of Law and Kenan Visiting Professor
at Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, Associate Professor Angie Raymond of Indiana University, and
Professor Janine Hiller of Virginia Tech.

Due to the success of this multi-year event that now is in its sixth year, the colloquium will be expanded and we seek broad participation from multiple disciplines. Please consider submitting research that is ready for the discussion stage. Each paper will receive detailed constructive critique. We are targeting cross-discipline opportunities for colloquium participants.

Examples of…

Twitter tells me that there was a good bit of conversation at the AALS conference about the law review-based system of scholarship. If you want to try your hand at a different system, namely the double-blind peer-reviewed system, here is a call for papers from a legal journal in that system. 

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The Atlantic Law Journal is now open for submissions and is soliciting papers for its upcoming Volume 21 with an expected publication date in summer 2019. We are now also accepting book review submissions for books related to business law/society/legal studies.  The Atlantic Law Journal is listed in Cabell’s, fully searchable in Thomson-Reuters Westlaw, and listed by Washington & Lee. The journal is a double-blind peer-reviewed publication of the Mid-Atlantic Academy of Legal Studies in Business (MAALSB). Acceptance rates are at or less than 25%, and have been for all our recent history. We publish articles that explore the intersection of business and law, as well as pedagogical topics. Please see our website at http://www.atlanticlawjournal.org/submissions/ for the submission guidelines, the review timeline, and more information regarding how to submit. Submissions or questions can be sent to Managing Editor, Dr. Evan Peterson, at petersea@udmercy.edu.