Monday, I had the privilege of moderating a discussion on structuring merger and acquisition transactions that I had organized as part of a continuing legal education program for the Tennessee Bar Association.  Rather than doing the typical comparison/contrast of different business combination structures (with charts, etc.), I organized the hour-long discussion around the banter that corporate/securities and tax folks have in structuring a transaction.  We used the terms of a proposed transaction (an LLC business being acquired by a public corporation) as a jumping-off point.

The idea for the format came from a water cooler conversation–literally–among me (in the role of a corporate/securities lawyer), one of my property lawyer colleagues, and one of my tax lawyer colleagues.  The conversation started with a question my property law colleague had about the conveyance of assets in a merger.   I told him that mergers are not asset conveyance transactions but, rather, statutory transactions that have the effects provided for in the statute, which include a vesting of assets in the surviving corporation.  I told him that I call this “merger magic.”  I showed him Section 259(a) of the Delaware General Corporation Law:

When any merger or consolidation shall have become effective under this chapter, . . . all property, real, personal and mixed, and all debts due to any of said constituent corporations on whatever account, as well for stock subscriptions as all other things in action or belonging to each of such corporations shall be vested in the corporation surviving or resulting from such merger or consolidation . . . .

We discussed the possibility of an assignment/transfer of assets by operation of law under that provision and more generally under Delaware law in connection with different types of mergers, including recent case law regarding reverse triangular mergers.  Ultimately, my property law colleague decided that a direct merger involved an asset sale by the target entity and a purchase transaction by the surviving corporation, as a matter of property law, notwithstanding my “merger magic” explanation I was forwarding as a descriptor under state corporate law.

The tax guy thought all this (both descriptions of a merger) was balderdash.  These descriptions were too complex and stilted for his taste.  Not to be outdone, he offered that all merger and acquisition transactions are either asset sales or sales of equity.  At least, he allowed, that’s how federal income tax law looks at them . . . .  I told him that asset and equity sale transactions are joined by mergers (direct, reverse triangular, and forward triangular) and share exchange transactions (which are also statutory transactions, available in Tennessee and other Model Business Corporation Act states, but not available in Delaware) in the corporate lawyer’s business combination toolkit.  I also noted that federal securities law voting and reporting requirements work off these different corporate law descriptors.

Fascinating!  Three lawyers, three different conceptions of business combination transactions.  The moderated discussion on Monday was, in effect, an attempt by me to recreate, albeit in a different form, parts of that conversation.  The discussion was, in my view, decently successful in achieving its limited purpose in the program.  Nevertheless, I really wish I had a transcription of that original conversation by the water cooler.  That was truly priceless . . . .

Earlier today, Reuters published a fascinating investigative journalist piece by Joshua Schneyer & Brian Grow raising questions about Dow Chemical’s CEO Andrew Liveris.  Drawing facts and allegations from internal auditor reports, filings in retaliation and employment suits, Dow documents regarding Liveris’s nearly $720,000 reimbursement of improper spending, and documents related to an alleged pet charity in Greece create the backdrop for an interesting story that suggests officer wrong-doing and raises fiduciary duty concerns.  This may be an interesting story to watch unfold, or at least a great afternoon procrastination excuse.

-Anne Tucker

Benjamin Means (South Carolina) recently posted a new article to SSRN entitled Wealth Inequality and Family Businesses. The article is forthcoming in the Emory Law Journal.

This article builds on Ben’s previous, extensive and well-regarded research on family businesses. Ben’s analysis of the relationship between family businesses and wealth inequality is carefully done and thought-provoking. The abstract is posted below, and I recommend reading the entire article.

Wealth inequality endangers democratic values and calls for a public response. This Article contends that family businesses merit special scrutiny because they control vast amounts of private wealth and combine two of society’s most important economic institutions: family and business. Accordingly, family businesses implicate concerns regarding both inherited wealth and the concentration of economic power made possible by the corporate form.

 

Despite their economic significance, little has been done to investigate whether family businesses contribute to wealth inequality. This Article offers the first legal, and one of the only academic, treatments of the topic and shows that family businesses play a double role. On the one hand, family businesses reinforce existing disparities in wealth and opportunity. Heirs, after all, stand to benefit from the hard work of previous generations. On the other hand, family businesses can be a powerful antidote to inequality, disrupting entrenched class hierarchies and creating opportunities for individuals, families, and ethnic communities.

 

This Article concludes that whether family businesses produce net social costs or benefits depends crucially on two principal factors. First, to the extent there is a lack of public investment in social mobility, family businesses can increase the distribution of wealth by providing needed investments in human capital. Second, to the extent the rewards of capitalism are not widely shared, family businesses can offer a source of opportunity, not just for family members, but also for employees and the communities in which family businesses operate. Thus, family businesses should not be viewed in isolation; a comprehensive response to the problem of wealth inequality must involve the state, the family, and the market.

Over the last few years, book stores and publishers have been evolving in how they offer books. Some textbooks are available electronically, and others are available for rent.  Although I always try to be thoughtful about how students learn throughout the year, I find that I am especially sensitive to such thoughts when it’s time to grade exams and papers.  I obviously can’t speak for all my fellow law professors, but I know a lot of us agree that we really like our students, and we want (and expect) them to succeed.  

The cost of books matters.  This article reports that students often spend $1200 a year on books and supplies, and further revealed:  

Of the students surveyed, 65% said they decided against buying a textbook because of the high cost, and 94% of those students said they were concerned that their decision would hurt their grade in that course. Nearly half of the students surveyed said the cost of textbooks affected which courses they took.

This was not a law-specific survey, and I think (and hope) most law students do buy (or rent) their books. I absolutely support trying to make books more affordable, but it cannot come at the expense of content.  I have taught some of my courses with all free materials, but that does not work for me in all cases.  

This year, my thoughts on the learning process have turned, in part, to textbook rentals. Some (and perhaps many) students have moved on to book rentals instead of purchases.  I am sympathetic to how much books cost, and I can understand why students would look for savings where they can.  I am, how, concerned that rented books could have a negative impact on learning because of limits (or perceived limits) on how a renter can treat the books.  

Barnes & Noble, for example, has the following book rental policy: 

Rules of Renting
Textbook rentals allow us to reuse and recycle books. We hope that you return your rental textbook to us in a condition for someone else to reuse later. If the textbook is returned with excessive highlighting or writing, missing pages, and/or damaged spines or covers, you will be charged for the replacement of the book. 

This seems reasonable enough, but I worry that the concern about limiting highlighting and writing in the book could serve to limit student engagement with the content.  There is other language that suggests that it’s not just “excessive highlighting or writing” that could be a concern. Also from the B&N website:

Treat with Care 
Over the course of your studies be aware that other students will be renting the textbook after you, so please limit highlighting and writing in the book.

This is not merely advising against “excessive” notation — it is also requesting “limit[ed]” highlighting and writing in the book.  I am someone who likes to write in the margins, for example, and connect thoughts or ideas with circles and lines in the text.  I am also not averse to highlighting important passages.  (As a side note, I get the point on truly excessive highlighting.  I bought one book that had so much highlighting it was easier to pick out what was not highlighted. Kind of annoying and amusing at the same time.  I was able to work with it, but I was more careful with future purchases.) 

As a first-year student, I wrote every term I didn’t know (or suspected was a term of art) in the margins to look up in Black’s Law Dictionary.  I sometimes even wrote the definition in the margin. This kind of connection with the material, I think, was an important part of my learning process. I realize not everyone learns this way, but for those of us who do, I fear that the textbook rental will limit that experience.

Obviously, one who knows they learn better by writing in books can just choose to buy, instead of rent. Unfortunately, at least some of us wouldn’t know that’s they way we learn until after we get started. I can’t say that I would have known, anyway.  My (lax) undergraduate study habits were not in any way similar to my law school habits, and I was more than five years removed from school when I went back to law school.   

I don’t have a great answer right now, and I have not been able to readily find any studies to support my concerns on book rentals (or allay my fears).  For students, I would say to think about how you learn and consider whether a book rental runs the risk of negatively impacting your education. For educators, I think we need to keep thinking about how students interact with the learning material, and we need to be aware of, and adjust to, the outside forces that may change the student learning process.  Comments on all of this are most certainly welcome.  

In some European countries, bank interest rates have dropped below zero. (See here and here.) That’s right; it actually costs you to put your money in the bank. You put $1,000 in a savings account and the bank promises to pay you, say, $999, in a year.

I came of age in the Gerald Ford/Jimmy Carter years, when annual inflation rates were in the double digits. Whip Inflation Now!  (Yes, children, I’m ancient.) I find it almost unbelievable that nominal interest rate (and bond yields) could drop below zero.

That hasn’t happened in the United States (yet), but what if it did? Set aside the huge macroeconomic issues, and let’s focus on a topic of greater interest to the readers of this blog—the effect on federal securities law, particularly the core notion of what constitutes a security.

The most important case in defining the scope of federal securities law is probably SEC v. W.J. Howey Co., 328 U.S. 293 (1946).  Howey says that an investment is an investment contract, and therefore a security, if people invest money in a common enterprise with an expectation of profits coming from the efforts of others.

The “expectation of profits” part of the Howey test is the problem in a negative-interest-rate economy. Assume, for example, that an entrepreneur asks people for money to start a business and promises to return that money, without interest, in two years. In other words, you put in $1,000 and he’ll pay you back $1,000 in two years.

That investment would not ordinarily be treated as a security because there’s no profit. That’s how the Kiva crowdfunding site,  which is based on no-interest lending, can avoid federal securities law. But, in a negative-interest world, a mere return of your principal is, in effect, profitable. Considering your opportunity cost, you come out ahead.

If we ever have negative interest rates and the courts hold that no-interest investments are securities, remember that you read it here first.

The gripping story of how an accountant took on Halliburton and won.

It’s the story of Tony Menendez, a Halliburton accountant who believed that the company was incorrectly recognizing revenue.  When the company wouldn’t correct its practices, he went to the SEC.  Halliburton learned of the complaint,  Menendez was ostracized, and the SEC investigation was dropped.  This kicked off a years-long battle in which Menendez sought protection under SOX as a whistleblower, ultimately culminating in a decision from the Fifth Circuit. 

What the article does not discuss, though, is the legal issue that dominated the case – namely, what legally qualifies as an adverse action for SOX purposes.  Halliburton executives disclosed Menendez’s identity to the rest of the accounting department, and his coworkers shunned him; thus, the critical question was, did disclosure of his identity, coupled with ostracism, constitute a materially adverse action?  See Halliburton, Inc. v. Administrative Review Bd., 771 F.3d 254 (5th Cir. 2014).  Notably, just last month, the Fifth Circuit – in a very closely divided decision – decided not to rehear the case en banc, over the lengthy dissent of Judge Jolly.  See Halliburton Co. v. Admin. Review Bd., United States DOL, 596 Fed. Appx. 340 (5th Cir. 2015)).

Anyway, the article presents a rather a riveting David-and-Goliath story that, among other things, highlights the risks inherent in the practice of government agencies relying on internal investigations when deciding whether to take an enforcement action.

PrawfsBlawg has compiled an entry-level hiring report for law professors a number of years. Brian Leiter tracks law professor lateral hires with tenure. These lists serve at least two purposes:

  • welcoming new hires into the academy (or to their new positions) and
  • providing a summary of the state of the legal academic hiring market

As a curious law firm associate, with hopes of an academic career, lists of this type were especially valuable in shining light on the qualifications of new academic hires.

While the lists of law professor hires seem well-covered elsewhere, I have not seen similar hiring lists for legal studies professor hires in business schools. For this first edition, I am simply pasting the material sent to me via e-mail or in the comments. I will cover full-time entry level or lateral hires in this list, but may split them into separate posts in future years. I will continue to update this list periodically, as some business schools may still be hiring.

Updated 7/7/2015

Details below the page break.

Continue Reading Legal Studies Professor Hires for 2015

National Business Law Scholars Conference

Thursday & Friday, June 4-5, 2015 (Seton Hall University School of Law, Newark, NJ)

The organizers have put together a great line up of speakers and this conference is becoming (has already become) an intellectual highlight for the summer.  Keynote speakers include:  SEC Commissioner Troy Paredes, and Boston College Law  Professor Kent Greenfield.

In addition to the call for papers, which has been extended to May 8th (email Eric Chaffee), the conference will feature a Plenary Panel on the Extraterritorial Application of Federal Financial Markets Regulations with the following participants: 

Colleen Baker (view bio)
Lecturer, University of Illinois, College of Business

Sean Griffith (view bio)
T.J. Maloney Chair in Business Law; Director, Fordham Corporate Law Center

Eric Pan (view bio)
Associate Director, Office of International Affairs, U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission

Joshua White (view bio)
University of Georgia, Terry College of Business

For those of you unfamiliar with the NBLSC, here’s a conference description from the organizers: 

This is the sixth annual meeting of the NBLSC, a conference which annually draws together legal scholars from across the United States and around the world. We welcome all scholarly submissions relating to business law. Presentations should focus on research appropriate for publication in academic journals, law reviews, and should make a contribution to the existing scholarly literature. We will attempt to provide the opportunity for everyone to actively participate. Junior scholars and those considering entering the legal academy are especially encouraged to participate. For additional information, please email Professor Eric C. Chaffee at eric.chaffee@utoledo.edu.

-Anne Tucker

 

 

 

 

PLENARY PANEL – THE EXTRATERRITORIAL APPLICATION OF FEDERAL FINANCIAL MARKETS REGULATIONS


Colleen Baker (view bio)
Lecturer, University of Illinois, College of Business

Sean Griffith (view bio)
T.J. Maloney Chair in Business Law; Director, Fordham Corporate Law Center

Eric Pan (view bio)
Associate Director, Office of International Affairs, U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission

Joshua White (view bio)
University of Georgia, Terry College of Business

CALL FOR PAPERS (EXTENDED UNTIL MAY 8, 2015)

To submit a presentation, email Professor Eric C. Chaffee at eric.chaffee@utoledo.edu with an abstract or paper by May 8, 2015. Please title the email “NBLSC Submission – {Name}”. If you would like to attend, but not present, email Professor Chaffee with an email entitled “NBLSC Attendance.” Please specify in your email whether you are willing to serve as a commentator or moderator.

CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS

Barbara Black (The University of Cincinnati College of Law, Retired)
Eric C. Chaffee (The University of Toledo College of Law)
Steven M. Davidoff Solomon (The University of California Berkeley Law School)
Kristin N. Johnson (Seton Hall University School of Law)
Elizabeth Pollman (Loyola Law School, Los Angeles)
Margaret V. Sachs (University of Georgia Law)

HOTEL INFORMATION


Hilton Penn Station | Online Reservations Availalbe Here
Located one block from Seton Hall Law School

  • Located adjacent to Newark Penn Station (Amtrak and New Jersey Transit Rail Lines)
  • Four miles from Newark Liberty International Airport – Complimentary shuttle service
  • $209 + tax per night
  • Reservations may be made online here or by calling 973-622-5000
  • Reference: SETON HALL UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW
  • Location: Gateway Center – Raymond Boulevard, Newark, New Jersey
  • Hilton Penn Station will release rooms on May 13, 2015.


Courtyard Marriott Newark Downtown
Located in downtown Newark (ten minute walk)

  • Located in the heart of downtown Newark adjacent to the Prudential Center and easily accessible to all major transportation
  • Four miles from Newark Liberty International Airport – Complimentary shuttle service
  • $139 + tax per night
  • Reservations may be made by calling: 973-848-0070
  • Reference: SETON HALL LAW SCHOOL
  • Location: 858 Broad Street, Newark, New Jersey
  • Courtyard Newark Downtown will release rooms on May 13, 2015.

LOCAL ATTRACTIONS AND INFORMATION

Visit and explore Seton Hall Law and its surrounding area.

Thaugh_med

Professor Todd Haugh (Indiana University – Kelley School of Business) will be joining us as a guest blogger for the month of May. Todd is an assistant professor of business law & ethics and has focused his research on white collar crime and sentencing. His most recent work deals with “the financial crisis and how white collar offenders rationalize their conduct.” We welcome Todd to the Business Law Prof Blog and look forward to his posts.