Securities Regulation

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This timely post comes to us from Jeremy R. McClane, Associate Professor of Law and Cornelius J. Scanlon Research Scholar at the University of Connecticut School of Law.  Jeremy can be reached at jeremy.mcclane@uconn.edu. 
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Spotify, the Swedish music streaming company known for disrupting the music market might do the same thing this week to the equity capital markets. On April 3, Spotify plans to go public but in an unusual way. Instead of issuing new stock and enlisting an underwriter to build a book of orders and provide liquidity, Spotify plans to cut out the middleman and list stock held by existing shareholders directly on the New York Stock Exchange.

This will be an interesting experiment that will test some prevailing assumptions that about how firms must raise capital from the public.

The Importance of Bookbuilding. First, we will see just how important bookbuilding is to ensuring a successful IPO. When most companies go public, they hire an underwriter to market the shares in what is known as a “firm commitment” underwriting. The investment banks commit to finding buyers for all of the shares, or purchasing any unsold shares themselves if they cannot find buyers (an occurrence which never happens in practice). The process involves visiting institutional investors and building a book of orders, which are then used to gauge demand and set a price at which to float the stock. The benefit of this process is risk management – the issuing company and its underwriters try to ensure that the offering will be a success (and the price won’t plummet or experience volatile ups and downs) by setting a price at a level that they know market demand will bear, and ensuring that there are orders for all of the shares even before they are sold into the market.

Without underwriters or bookbuilding, Spotify is taking a risk that its share price will be set at the wrong level and become unstable. In Spotify’s case, however there is already relatively active trading of shares in private transactions, which gives the company some indication of what the right price should be. Nonetheless, that indication of price is volatile, in part because the securities laws limit the market for its shares by restricting the number of pre-IPO shareholders to 2,000, at least in the US. In 2017 for example, the price of Spotify’s shares traded in private transactions ranging from $37.50 to $125.00, according to the company’s Form F-1 registration statement.

Brent Horton of Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business recently posted his American Business Law Journal article on pre-Securities Act prospectuses.

For interested readers, the abstract is below and the article can be downloaded here.

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Some legal scholars—skeptics—question the conventional wisdom that corporations failed to provide adequate information to prospective investors before the passage of the Securities Act of 1933 (Securities Act). These skeptics argue that the Securities Act’s disclosure requirements were largely unnecessary. For example, Paul G. Mahoney in his 2015 book, Wasting A Crisis: Why Securities Regulation Fails, relied on the fact that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) imposed disclosure requirements in the 1920s to conclude that stories about poor pre-Act disclosure are “demonstrably wrong”. (Likewise, Roberta Romano argued in Empowering Investors that “there is little tangible proof” that disclosure was inadequate pre-Securities Act.) 

This Article sets out to determine who is correct, those that accept the conventional wisdom that pre-Securities Act disclosure was inadequate, or the skeptics?

The Author examined twenty-five stock prospectuses (the key piece of disclosure provided to prospective investors) that predate the Securities Act. This primary-source documentation strongly suggests that—contrary to the assertions of skeptics—pre-Act prospectuses did fail to provide potential …

Matt Kelly of Radical Compliance has posted on the costs and benefits of regulation. His post is timely considering this week’s rollback of certain Dodd-Frank banking provisions by the Senate. Among other things, Kelly notes that according to a draft OMB report, “across 133 major rules, the average annualized cost (in 2015 dollars) was $92.8 billion, average annualized benefit $554.8 billion. Benefits were six times larger than costs.” He further writes, with some skepticism, that the OMB is seeking comment from “peer reviewers with expertise… in regulatory policy” on its cost-benefit analysis as it finalizes its report. 

He also cited GW public policy professors who looked at over two hundred major rules adopted between 2007-2010 and found that “The design of the rulemaking process can both increase the pace with which rules are promulgated and reduce the level of detail in which they are presented, but only when care is taken to ensure the individuals intimately involved have greater breadth – relative to depth – in the competencies they bring to the endeavor.” As Kelly, observed, ” Teams with more “breadth of competencies” (one subject matter expert, one lawyer, one economic analyst, one regulatory affairs specialist, and so forth) tended…

As I read recent news reports (starting a bit over a week ago and exemplified by stories here, here, here, and here–with the original story featured here) about Carl Icahn’s well-timed sale of Manitowoc Company, Inc. stock, I could not help but associate the Icahn/Manitowoc intrigue with the Stewart/ImClone affair from back in the early days of the new millennium–more than 15 years ago.  As many of you know, I spent a fair bit of time researching and writing on Martha Stewart’s legal troubles relating to her December 2001 sale of ImClone Systems, Inc. stock.  Eventually, I coauthored and edited a law teaching text focusing on some of the key issues.  A bit of my Martha Stewart work is featured in that book; much of the rest can be found on my SSRN author page.  For those who may not recall or know about the Stewart/ImClone matter, the SEC’s press release relating to its insider trading enforcement action against Stewart is here, and it supplies some relevant background.  (Btw, ImClone apparently is now a privately held subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company organized as an LLC.)

In reading about Icahn’s Manitowoc stock sale…

Like my fellow editors here at the BLPB, I enjoyed the first Business Law Prof Blog conference hosted by The University of Tennessee College of Law back in the fall.  They have begun to post their recently published work presented at that event over the past few weeks.  See, e.g., here and here (one of several newly posted Padfield pieces) and here. I am adding mine to the pile: Professional Responsibility in an Age of Alternative Entities, Alternative Finance, and Alternative Facts.  The SSRN abstract reads as follows:

Business lawyers in the United States find little in the way of robust, tailored guidance in most applicable bodies of rules governing their professional conduct. The relative lack of professional responsibility and ethics guidance for these lawyers is particularly troubling in light of two formidable challenges in business law: legal change and complexity. Change and complexity arise from exciting developments in the industry that invite—even entice—the participation of business lawyers.

This essay offers current examples from three different areas of business law practice that involve change and complexity. They are labeled: “Alternative Entities,” “Alternative Finance,” and “Alternative Facts.” Each area is described, together with significant attendant professional responsibility and ethics…

I love the Kardashians. I don’t watch the reality show, but I do keep up with them because I use them in hypotheticals in class and in exams for entity selection questions. The students roll their eyes, but invariably most of them admit to knowing everything about them. When the students can relate to the topic, it makes my job easier. That’s why I used the SNAP IPO last year as our case study on basic securities law. Every year I pick a “hot” offering to go through some of the key principles and documents, and Snap was the logical choice because the vast majority of the students love(d) the Snapchat app. The company explained as its first risk factor “… the majority of our users are 18-34 years old. This demographic may be less brand loyal and more likely to follow trends than other demographics. These factors may lead users to switch to another product, which would negatively affect our user retention, growth, and engagement.” I used myself as an example to explain that risk factor in class. I have over 100 apps on my smartphone, and I have a son in the target demographic, but I  never open…

This may be obsolete by the time you read this post, but here are my thoughts on Corporate Governance, Compliance, Social Responsibility, and Enterprise Risk Management in the Trump/Pence Era. Thank you, Joan Heminway and the wonderful law review editors of Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law. The abstract is below:

With Republicans controlling Congress, a Republican CEO as President, a “czar” appointed to oversee deregulation, and billionaires leading key Cabinet posts, corporate America had reason for optimism following President Trump’s unexpected election in 2016. However, the first year of the Trump Administration has not yielded the kinds of results that many business people had originally anticipated. This Essay will thus outline how general counsel, boards, compliance officers, and institutional investors should think about risk during this increasingly volatile administration. 

Specifically, I will discuss key corporate governance, compliance, and social responsibility issues facing U.S. public companies, although some of the remarks will also apply to the smaller companies that serve as their vendors, suppliers, and customers. In Part I, I will discuss the importance of enterprise risk management and some of the prevailing standards that govern it. In Part II, I will focus on the changing role…

At The University of Tennessee College of Law, we have a four-credit-hour, four-module course called Representing Enterprises that is one of three capstone course offerings in our Concentration in Business Transactions.  In Representing Enterprises, each course module focuses on a different aspect of transactional business law, often a specific transaction or task.  We try to both ask the enrolled students to apply law that they have learned in other courses (doctrinal and experiential) and also introduce the students to applied practice in areas of law to which they have not or may not yet have been exposed.

I have been teaching the first module over the past few weeks.  We finish up tomorrow.  My module focuses on disclosure regulation.  I have five class meetings, two hours for each meeting, to cover this topic.  Each class engages students with a hypothetical that raises disclosure questions.

The first class focused on general rule identification regarding the applicable laws governing disclosure in connection with the purchase of limited liability membership interests.  Specifically, our client had bought out his fellow members of a member-managed Tennessee limited liability company at a nominal price and without giving them full information about a reality television opportunity our…

The new semester is upon us, and AALS (as it tends to) ran right into the new semester.  Joan Heminway provided a nice overview of some of her activities, including her recognition as an outstanding mentor by the Section on Business Associations, and it was a pleasure to see her recognized for her tireless and consistent efforts to make all of us better.  Congratulations, Joan, and thank you! 

I, too, had a busy conference, with most of it condensed to Friday and Saturday. (As a side note, it was pretty great to run along the water in 55-65 degree weather. As much as I love New York and appreciate San Francisco and DC, I’d be quite content with AALS moving between San Diego and New Orleans.)  I spoke on a panel with my co-bloggers, as Joan noted, about shareholder proposals, and I spoke on a panel about the green economy and sustainability, which was also fun.  It’s nice when I am able to spend some time with a focus on my two main areas of research. 

As to our panel on shareholder proposals, I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts.  First, as I have explained in the past…

AALS2018(SHProposalPanel)

Last week, I had the privilege of attending and participating in the 2018 annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (#aals2018).  I saw many of you there.  It was a full four days for me.  The conference concluded on Saturday with the program captured in the photo above–four of us BLPB co-bloggers (Stefan, me, Josh, and Ann) jawing about shareholder proposals–as among ourselves and with our engaged audience members (who provided excellent questions and insights).  Thanks to Stefan for organizing the session and inspiring our work with his article, The Inclusive Capitalism Shareholder Proposal.  I learned a lot in preparing for and participating in this part of the program.

Earlier that day, BLPB co-blogger Anne Tucker and I co-moderated (really, Anne did the lion’s share of the work) a discussion group entitled “A New Era for Business Regulation?” on current and future regulatory and de-regulatory initiatives.  In some part, this session stemmed from posts that Anne and I wrote for the BLPB here, here, and here.  I earlier posted a call for participation in this session.  The conversation was wide-ranging and fascinating.  I took notes for two essays I am writing this…