Securities Regulation

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I have had the good fortune of talking to friend-of-the-BLPB Frank Gevurtz about some of his illuminating “takes” on Omnicare, Inc. v. Laborers District Council Construction Industry Pension Fund, a decision we all wrestle with, it seems, in one way or another.  I recently ran into Frank (at the AALS Annual Meeting), and he informed me that some of those thoughts have made their way into a full-length article.  That article, Important Warning or Dangerous Misdirection: Rethinking Cautions Accompanying Investment Predictions, was recently posted to the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and is available here.  The abstract follows.

We are constantly bombarded with cautions warning us of dangers to our health or wellbeing. Sometimes, however, cautions increase the danger. This article addresses one example: cautions warning investors of the risks that predictions regarding corporate performance will not pan out.

Here, the danger is investors falling prey to trumped up predictions of corporate performance, the result of which is to misallocate resources, increase the cost of capital for honest businesses, and create a drag on the overall economy. This article shows how the typical cautions accompanying predictions of corporate performance facilitate rather than avoid this danger by misdirecting…

Earlier today, friend-of-the-BLPB Andrew Jennings released a podcast in his Business Scholarship Podcast series featuring me talking about my forthcoming piece in the Stetson Business Law Review, “Criminal Insider Trading in Personal Networks.”  You may recall me blogging about this piece as part of my report on the 2022 Law and Society Association’s 7th Global Meeting on Law and Society this past summer.  The SSRN abstract is as follows:

This Article describes and comments on criminal insider trading prosecutions brought over an eleven-year period. The core common element among these cases is that they all involve alleged tipper/tippee insider trading or misappropriation insider trading implicating information transfers between or among friends or family members (rather than merely business connections). The ultimate objectives of the Article are to explain and comment on the nature of these criminal friends-and-family insider trading cases and to posit reasons why friends and family become involved in criminal tipping and misappropriation–conduct that puts both the individual friends and family members and the relationships between and among them at risk.

I am grateful to be in the position of publishing this work in the near future (after a number of years of work on

…

Yesterday, I taught my Corporate Finance students about public offerings (focusing on initial public offerings–IPOs) and exempt offerings of securities.  The front end of this course focuses on the instruments of corporate finance and the back end focuses on a number of different corporate finance transactional contexts.  Although Business Associations is a prerequisite for the course, Securities Regulation is not.  As a result, the 75 minutes I spend on public and exempt offerings is less doctrinally focused and more practically driven (unsurprising, perhaps, given the fact that my Corporate Finance course is a practical applied experiential offering).

Students prepare for the class session by reading parts of the SEC’s website on going public and exempt offerings and reviewing an IPO checklist created and modified by me from a timetable/checklist I generated while I was in full-time law practice.  Each student also must bring to class and be prepared to discuss a news article or blog post on public securities offerings.  I share general knowledge and we dialogue about insights gained from the discussion items they bring to class.  It usually turns out to be a fun and engaged class day, and yesterday’s class meeting proved to be no exception.…

Co-blogger John Anderson and I are considering submitting a late proposal for the inclusion of a discussion group in the Business Law Workshop for the 2023 annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS). The 2023 conference is scheduled to be held from July 23 – July 29 at the Boca Raton Resort and Club. A draft title and description for the possible discussion group follow.

Stock Ownership and Trading by Government Officials – Time for Reform?

Allegations of unlawful insider trading by government officials have again been making headlines. Multiple Senators were investigated for suspiciously timed trades in advance of the COVID-19 market collapse. A February 2022 Business Insider article identified members of both houses of Congress hailing from both major political parties who have failed to comply with applicable federal legislation. And a recent poll found that more than three-quarters of American voters think members of Congress have an “unfair advantage” in trading stocks. This discussion group focuses on insider trading by government officials and the need for and nature of possible responses.

Please contact me as soon as possible if you are interested in participating. We need to assemble a group of at least ten…

Professor Caleb Griffin (University of Arkansas School of Law) offered testimony before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in June of 2022 on problems associated with the fact that the “Big Three” index fund managers (Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street) cast almost a quarter of the votes at S&P 500 companies. As a result, enormous power is concentrated in the hands of just a few index fund managers, whose interests and values may not align with those whose shares they are voting. Professor Griffin proposed two solutions to this problem: (1) “categorical” pass-through voting, and (2) vote outsourcing. Professor Griffin’s remarks were recently posted here, and here’s the abstract:

In recent years, index funds have assumed a new and unprecedented role as the most influential players in corporate governance. In particular, the “Big Three” index fund managers—Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street—occupy a pivotal role. The Big Three currently cast nearly a quarter of the votes at S&P 500 companies, and that figure is expected to grow to 34% by 2028 and over 40% in the following decade.

The best solution to the current problem—where we have virtually powerless index investors and enormous, concentrated power in the…

It was so wonderful to be able to host an in-person version of our “Connecting the Threads” Business Law Prof Blog symposium on Friday.  Connecting the Threads VI was, for me, a major victory in the continuing battle against COVID-19–five healthy bloggers and a live audience!  Being in the same room with fellow bloggers John Anderson, Colleen Baker, Doug Moll (presenting with South Carolina Law friend-of-the-BLPB Ben Means), and Stefan Padfield was truly joyful.  And the topics on which they presented–shadow insider trading, exchange trading in the cloud, family business succession, and anti-ESG legislation–were all so salient.  (I offered the abstract for my own talk on fiduciary duties in unincorporated business associations in last week’s post.)  For a number of us, the topic of our presentations arose from work we have done here on the BLPB.

This year, as I noted in my post last week, we had a special guest as our luncheon speaker.  That guest would be known to many of you who are regular readers as “Tom N.”  Tom has commented on our blog posts here on the BLPB for at least eight years.  (I rooted around and found a comment from him as…

image from www.lawandsociety.orgLast night, I happily found myself sitting at a café table above the River Douro in Porto, Portugal (see photo below) as part of a two-day hiatus before the Global Meeting on Law and Society in Lisbon.  I look forward to the conference and the rest of my time in this beautiful country.  Viva Portugal!

I am participating in a number of programs over the course of the conference as part of CRN 46 (Corporate and Securities Law in Society), a Law and Society Association collaborative research network that started as a female business law prof group that routinely organized programs at the annual conferences of the Law and Society Association.  I am very proud of this heritage.  The group continues to promote and support the scholarship of women and other underrepresented populations in the business law scholarly realm.

I no doubt will have more to say about the meeting once it has ended and I am back in the United States.  (I also am taking a personal trip to the Catalonia region of Spain before I return to Knoxville.)  But for today, I will offer information about my academic paper presentation at the conference.

On Saturday, July 16, I…

In August 2021, the SEC announced that it had charged Matthew Panuwat with insider trading in violation of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Panuwat was the head of business development at Medivation, a mid-sized biopharmaceutical company when he learned that his company was set to be acquired by Pfizer at a significant premium.

If Panuwat had purchased Medivation stock in advance of the announcement of the acquisition, it is likely he would have been liable for insider trading under the classical theory. Liability for insider trading under the classical theory arises when a firm issuing stock, its employees, or its other agents strive to benefit from trading (or tipping others who then trade) that firm’s stock based on material nonpublic information. Here the insider (or constructive insider) violates a fiduciary duty to the counterparty to the transaction (the firm’s current or prospective shareholders) by not disclosing the information advantage drawn from the firm’s material nonpublic information in advance of the trade.

If Panuwat had purchased shares of Pfizer in advance of the announcement, then it is likely he would have been liable under the misappropriation theory. Liability for insider trading under the misappropriation theory arises when…

Courtesy of friend-of-the-BLPB Bernie Sharfman, I am linking to his coauthored (with James Copland) comment letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the climate change rule-making proposal.  The letter includes copious footnotes.  As with other comment letters that have been written on the substance of the SEC proposal, there are some interesting definitional questions on which intelligent folks disagree.  E.g., what is included under the umbrella of investor protection?  What regulation promotes “efficiency, competition, and capital formation”?  These all are among the big picture issues on which the SEC has the opportunity to speak.  I expect thoughtful responses.

There have been number of recent BLPB posts representing a diversity of viewpoints concerning the SEC’s proposed rule to “Enhance and Standardize Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors”. For example, co-blogger Joan MacLeod Heminway recently posted on a comment letter drafted by  Jill E. FIsch, George S. Georgiev, Donna Nagy, and Cynthia A. WIlliams (and signed by Joan and 24 others) that affirms the proposed rule is within the SEC’s rulemaking authority. I have offered a couple posts raising concerns about the proposed rule from the standpoint of utility and legal authority (see here and here). One of the concerns I have raised is that the SEC’s proposed disclosure regime may compel corporate speech in a manner that runs afoul of the First Amendment. SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce raised this same concern, and now Professor Sean J. Griffith has posted a new article, “What’s ‘Controversial’ About ESG? A Theory of Compelled Commercial Speech under the First Amendment”, which offers a more comprehensive treatment of this problem. Professor Griffith has also submitted a comment letter to the SEC raising this issue. Here’s the abstract for Professor Griffith’s article:

This Article uses the SEC’s recent foray into ESG…