The New York Times ran the article How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions last weekend. It’s an interesting piece that provides a look at Donald Trump’s east coast casino experience.  The article is, as one might expect, critical of his dealings and notes that Trump made money even when his ventures when bankrupt.  

Though I will not defend any of Trump’s dealings, there are few issues raised that I think are worthy of a some discussion and clarification.1  The post that follows suggests how to consider Trump’s business history and place that history in a political context.

Continue Reading Trump Not Pro-Business, Just Pro-Trump

This post welcomes Doug (Douglas K.) Moll to the Business Law Prof Blog.  He’ll be posting with us a few times over the next month or so.  

Doug is the Beirne, Maynard & Parsons, L.L.P. Law Center Professor of Law at The University of Houston Law Center.  He teaches a variety of transactional business law courses: Business Organizations, Doing Deals, Business Torts, Secured Financing, and Sales and Leasing.  I have had the pleasure of working with him in other capacities (he is a fellow Tennessee BARBRI instructor and presented with me at the 2015 ABA LLC Institute, for example) and value his observations about transactional business law.  I also know him to be a highly decorated teacher–having won (according to his website bio) six teaching awards since 1998.  I look forward to his posts–and I am sure you will enjoy them!

This past week, I completed the second leg of my June Scholarship and Teaching Tour.  My time at “Method in the Madness: The Art and Science of Teaching Transactional Law and Skills” at Emory University School of Law last week was two days well spent.  I had a great time talking to attendees about my bylaw drafting module for our transaction simulation course, Representing Enterprises, and listening to others talk about their transactional law and skills teaching.  Great stuff.

This week’s portion of my academic tour begins with a teaching whistle-stop at the Nashville School of Law on Friday, continues with attendance (with my husband) at a former student’s wedding in Nashville on Saturday evening, and ends (my husband and I hope) with Sunday brunch out with our son (and his girlfriend if she is available).  Specifically, on Friday, I teach BARBRI for four hours in a live lecture.  The topics?  Well, I drew a short straw on that.  I teach agency, unincorporated business associations (including a bit about both extant limited liability statutes in Tennessee), and personal property–all in four hours.  Ugh.  Although I am paid for the lecture and my expenses are covered, I would not have taken (and would not continue to take) this gig if I didn’t believe that I could be of some help to students.  These topics–especially agency and partnership law, but also personal property–often are tested on the bar exam.  So, on I press.

I also am completing work this week on the draft article that I will present in Chicago and Seattle on the last two stops of my tour.  I will say more about that article in next week’s post.  In the mean time, let me know if you have any suggestions (or good jokes) on the law of agency, partnerships, LLCs, or personal property (e.g., tenancies, gifts, bailments, adverse possession, replevin) for my lecture on Friday . . . .  It’s so hard to make these speed-lectures somewhat engaging for the students.  [sigh]

A colleague sent me a link to a White House blog post focusing on Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act), known as the Capital Raising Online While Deterring Fraud and Unethical Non-Disclosure Act (CROWDFUND Act).  The main theme of the blog post, entitled The Promise of Crowdfunding and American Innovation, is stated in its summary: ”Crowdfunding’ rule makes it possible for entrepreneurs across the country to raise small-dollar investments from ordinary Americans.”  This much is true.  And the post accurately notes that “previous forms of crowdfunding” also already did this.

But the post goes on to extol the virtues of the CROWDFUND Act, which offers (among other things) a registration exemption for investment (or securities) crowdfunding–a very special type of crowdfunding involving the offer or sale of debt, equity, investment contracts, or other securities.  Or at least the blog post tries to extol the virtues of the CROWDFUND Act.  I am not buying it.  In fact, the post doesn’t come up with much of substance to praise . . . .

The coauthors focus a key paragraph on explaining why the CROWDFUND Act is heavy on investor protection provisions.  But they do not talk about the costs of the legislation in relation to its potential benefits, except in the most superficial way–mentioning “risks” without classifying them and outlining the “multiple layers of investor protections.”  Although it was written before the final Securities and Exchange Commission rules were adopted under the CROWDFUND Act, my article for the Kentucky Law Journal offers a more detailed picture of benefits and costs and shares my view that the costs are likely to outweigh the benefits for many market participants.

Maybe sensing this (and the possible lack of success of the CROWDFUND Act that may result from this imbalance), the coauthors of the White House blog post offer the following:

One encouraging recent sign is not only the launch of many new regulated crowdfunding platforms, but also the growing ecosystem of “startups helping startups” to provide services for this new marketplace—making it easier for entrepreneurs to fulfill disclosure requirements, verify investor credentials, educate investors, and more. Over time, these new tools may increase transparency and provide strong accountability not only for “the crowd,” but also for the “family and friends” that have long served as entrepreneurs’ first source of seed capital. 

This is a super effect of crowdfunding generally and of securities crowdfunding under the CROWDFUND Act specifically–the emergence of new services and market participants  to support crowdfunding and small capital raising more generally.  I predicted this in my first article on crowdfunding (co-authored with one of my former students) : “Because ‘[c]rowdfunding is a market of and for the participants,’ some traditional financial intermediaries may be shut out of this sector of the capital formation process.  No doubt, however, new support roles for crowdfunding will develop as the industry matures.”  [(p. 930, n.263) (citations omitted)]  But these market innovations would be more pronounced, imv, if the CROWDFUND Act provided participants with a more balanced set of costs for the benefits provided.  As the blog post notes, “it’s still a fact that not every entrepreneur has access to needed capital.”  More can be done to solve this problem with a registration exemption that allows for small capital raising–funding at well less than the $1 million level set under the CROWDFUND Act–at less cost.

The blog post concludes with more platitudes.  (“America’s entrepreneurs are our engines of economic growth, innovation, and job creation . . . .”)  Really, this blog post is a bit of a puff piece–manifesting both good marketing (for those who read and believe it) and overoptimism. 

But then again, what did I expect from a blog post put out by White House staff?  I suppose, given the President’s support for the CROWDFUND Act (and the JOBS Act overall–which the coauthors also praise more generally in a paragraph of the post), I should expect the White House to promote the use of the CROWDFUND Act through these kinds of public relations messages.  OK.  I get that.  Nevertheless, I admit to being disappointed that more is not being done in the Executive Branch and elsewhere to point out the shortcomings of the CROWDFUND Act and fine tune the regulation of securities crowdfunding so that it can have its maximum positive impact on business and project innovators and investors alike.  Instead, I fear that well intending proponents are over-promoting the CROWDFUND Act, which may ultimately sour folks on securities crowdfunding as a capital raising alternative if few are able to take advantage of the current regulatory exemptions.  We’ll see.  I hope I am wrong in worrying about this.  Time will tell.

I have been following Professor Angela Duckworth’s work on grit for well over a year, so I was eager to read her new book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I bought and read a book within a few weeks of it being published.  

The book is an easy read, written for a for a popular audience, and I was able to finish it in three relatively short sittings.

Below, I reflect on the book, hopefully in a balanced way. 

Thesis. As may be evident from previous posts of mine, I like Duckworth’s thesis – essentially, that passion and perseverance in pursuit of long-term goals are important in achieving success. Duckworth is careful to caveat her thesis, noting at hard work and passion are important, but are not the only factors that matter in achieving success. With this caveat, her thesis seems rather obvious and uninteresting.

Grit Scale. The Grit Scale Duckworth created for her studies seems easy to fake, and to her credit, she admits that it can be faked, like most self-reporting measures. Given the ability to fake the Grit Scale, I am not sure that it would be of much use in practical settings where the stakes are high (such as admissions or hiring). In one of the more interesting studies, Duckworth discusses how they gave the Grit Scale to West Point cadets before going through Beast Barracks (described as the toughest part of the four years). Supposedly, Grit scores did a nice job predicting who would stay and who would drop out. Given that the scale is easy to fake, maybe the interesting finding is not “those who actually have more grit perform better” but rather “those who think they have more grit (or are willing to lie that they have more grit) perform better. 

Parenting and Teaching. As a parent, I appreciated her chapter on parenting for Grit (though she admits that these are just her thoughts, and unlike other parts of the book, the parenting chapter is lacking directly applicable scientific studies). In particular, she notes the importance of being both supportive and demanding. This is also fairly obvious, but easy to forget, hard to consistently apply,  and important to remember. This instruction applies to teachers as well — make clear that you have high expectations, but also communicate you are there to help and believe the students can meet the expectations with work. For a skeptics view, at least on the point of whether grit can be taught, see here. 

Creativity, Talent, Structural Barriers: While Duckworth admits that there are other factors that contribute to success, I didn’t think she made a strong case for grit being more important than creativity or talent. In fact, most of the gritty people she mentioned had certain natural advantages over many others. While grit may be needed to get things done, it seems like creativity and talent and access are all necessary and may be even more important than grit in some cases. 

Anecdotes. There are a number of anecdotes in the book. The stories are less convincing than the academic studies, but the stories help illustrate her points. I especially liked the sports stories, including the ones about the UNC women’s soccer team and the Seattle Seahawks. The coach of the UNC soccer team, for example, had his team memorize passages related to each team core value, and then also integrated the values into practices and games. Much better than a meaningless organization vision statement. 

All in all, I think the book was worth reading, if only to stay current on some of the theories that are likely to be talked about by educators at all levels, and to inspire more passion and perseverance in general.

For a fair and thoughtful critique of Grit see here. 

Keep reading only if you have 3 minutes that you don’t care about being productive or relating to business law, at least not directly.

The Federal Election Committee issued a proposed draft of an advisory opinion on a question brought by Huckabee for President,  Inc.–the committee responsible for the 2016 presidential campaign of  former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.  The Committee wanted to know if it can use part of a legal defense fund to pay a settlement. The FEC says yes.  This isn’t an election law blog, so I won’t go into the details.  The litigation arose over the campaign’s use of the song “Eye of the Tiger“.  The FEC,  feeling quite cheeky writes the following: 

The complaint, seeking injunctive relief and monetary damages, alleged that 21 the Committee had violated federal copyright law by playing the song “Eye of the Tiger” at a campaign event on September 8, 2015. The Committee, rising up to the challenge of its rival, incurred attorneys’ fees and other expenses in defending itself in that litigation. After briefly relishing the thrill of the fight, the parties settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.

Has the political circus of the 2016 election warped the sense of decorum at the FEC or should we all want to be friends with the lawyers there?  I can’t decide.  But I do know that you should (a) click on the link to the song, and (b) jam away in your office for the next 4 minutes.  

You are welcome.

-Anne Tucker

I attended my first Law and Society meeting this year (made easier by the fact that it was held in New Orleans, my newly-adopted city!)   And as Joan indicated in a prior post, she gave a presentation on her most recent project, tentatively titled “Pillow Talk, The Parent Trap, Sibling Rivalries, Kissing Cousins, and Other Personal Relationships in U.S. Insider Trading Cases.”  And very shortly after she concluded, a news story dropped in my inbox about SEC v. Maciocio, involving two longtime friends charged in an insider trading scheme that lasted for several years. 

The reason the case interests me is that I assume the SEC (and the DOJ in a parallel criminal complaint) are teeing it up in light of the pending Supreme Court case of Salman v. United States. 

According to the SEC’s allegations, Maciocio worked for a pharmaceutical company that engaged in business dealings with several other companies.  Hobson was his longtime childhood friend.  The details of their relationship are described in the SEC’s complaint, including their days of Little League baseball, and daily phone calls and emails.

Hobson, as it turns out, was a securities broker.  So, Maciocio tipped off Hobson whenever his employer struck a new business deal – as you do – allowing Hobson to reap nearly $200,000 in trading profits.  Maciocio made similar trades himself.  

But the striking thing about the complaint is that the SEC is extraordinarily vague in describing any personal benefit that Maciocio received from tipping Hobson.  Maciocio profited from his own trades, of course, but in exchange for passing information to Hobson, the SEC only alleges that he received barely-described “investment advice” and “stock tips” – not much of a benefit, considering that Hobson was Maciocio’s broker and presumably would have given advice anyway.  Beyond that, the SEC openly alleges that the tips were simply a “gift” to Maciocio’s “close personal friend.” 

The reason this is striking, of course, is that in Dirks v. SEC, 463 U.S. 646 (1983), the Supreme Court – reacting to the extraordinarily bizarre facts before it – invented the rule that gratuitous tipping does not a Section 10(b) violation make.

So the critical question is, does friendship maintenance have legally cognizable value?

Well, that’s what the Supreme Court is set to consider in Salman: whether “gift” of information is enough to count as a 10(b) violation, even in the absence of a concrete benefit to the tipper.  In Salman, though, the giftee was a relative, and the law has a much harder time with the nebulous bonds of friendship.  The difficulty is that without a grand theory of insider trading – which the law has yet to develop – it’s not clear what kind of relationships suffice.  The last thing we want is a case by case analysis about whether a friendship was close enough to count – creating uncertainty for everyone who trades – and there’s no obvious reason why a tip to a casual buddy should somehow be less harmful to markets than a tip to a BFF. Then again, if friendship isn’t enough, the government will make do with whatever benefit peppercorns it can find – steak dinners, anyone? – which hardly makes any more sense.

Point being, Joan – I look forward to seeing what you can make of all this!

If you’ve been slamming away on a writing deadline then perhaps you’ve missed the opportunity (like me) to dive into the recent Chancery Court of Delaware Dell appraisal rights opinion (downloadable here).  Have no fear, your summary is here.

Vice Chancellor Laster valued Dell’s common stock at $17.62 per share, reflecting a 28% premium above the $13.75 merger price that was paid to Dell shareholders in October 2014 in a going private transaction lead by company-founder Michael Dell. Dell’s going private transaction was opposed by Carl Icahn and this juicy, contentious transaction has its own required reading list.  When conceding defeat, Carl Icahn sent the following letter to Dell Shareholders:

New York, New York, September 9, 2013 

Dear Fellow Dell Inc. Stockholders:

I continue to believe that the price being paid by Michael Dell/Silver Lake to purchase our company greatly undervalues it, among other things, because:

1. Dell is paying a price approximately 70% below its ten-year high of $42.38; and

2. The bid freezes stockholders out of any possibility of realizing Dell’s great potential.

Fast forward nearly 3 years later and it seems Vice Chancellor Laster agrees.  VC Laster reached his undervaluation decision despite no finding of significant fault with the company’s directors’ conduct or a competing bidder.  Instead, VC Laster focused on the fall in the company’s stock price, and a failure to determine the intrinsic value of Dell before negotiating the buyout. The business press and law blogs have exploded with articles, a few of which are highlighted below:

-Anne Tucker

 

I read an article this morning that resonated with me.  It was odd, because it was about a University of Michigan sports coach. As a dedicated Spartan, that’s not always easy to reconcile. 

Michigan’s softball team lost in the College World Series, and there was understandable disappointment.  I thought coach Carol Hutchins message, though, was spot on: 

“One thing I learned after the national championship, it definitely doesn’t define you,” she said. “If winning defines you, you’re not focused on the right things. I’m defined by all the women that I’ve been able to help grow up and who have impacted my life equally. I define myself by that.

“We’ve won a lot of games here, we’ve lost a lot of games here. It’s a sport. We do the best we can every day.”

Yes. You can’t control who you play.  You control how you prepare, and how you try, and how you care.  Sometimes, you can control how you play, but not always who you play against or the tools you have at your disposal.

This is true as a lawyer, too.  You may have bad facts. Or a bad client. Or a whole host of other hurdles. On a bad day (hopefully) you may go up against someone who is just better than you. You can control how you prepare, how hard you work, and how much you care.  The rest, is out of your hands.  

You can’t let winning define your worth. If you do, there’s a good chance you will underestimate your value when you lose. And overestimate it when you win. A little perspective goes a long way, and odds are, with perspective, as long as you sustain your effort, you have a better chance at winning more often.