A few weeks ago a group of CEOs, business execs, policy-makers, academics and spiritual guides converged for a three-day symposium in Switzerland to discuss specific pathways for blending “inspiration,” “innovation,” and “investment”.  Indeed, the title and central theme of this year’s symposium was “Daring for Big Impact — Blending Inspiration, Innovation and Investment” and I was humbled to be invited to present my work on Shareholder Cultivation and New Governance. I left feeling inspired and with a renewed sense of purpose, and recently posted a summary of the discussions on the HuffPo. A link to that piece is available here.

 

There is a new face on an old problem — American companies “moving” overseas in part to avoid U.S. taxes — that has increased in popularity in the last several years and recently gained political attention. Last week President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew called for tax reform to encourage economic patriotism and to deter corporate defectors, calling the overseas moves legal, but immoral.

Two structural features of the U.S. tax code incentivize corporations to move abroad. The U.S. corporate tax rate, at 35 percent, is high compared to the average Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) rate of 25 percent, and the average European Union rate of 21 percent. Many corporations effectively pay much less than 35 percent, after factoring in loopholes and deductions, policies that cost approximately $150 billion in untaxed revenue last year. But the reported tax rate is high compared to other jurisdictions and the complexity required to reduce that rate in practice also is a deterrent.

Second, other countries like the United Kingdom become attractive foreign tax locations because they operate under a territorial system that does not tax profits earned outside of the home country. Under the U.S. system, however, returning foreign-earned corporate profits home is a taxable event at high corporate tax rates. As a result, it is estimated that $2 trillion in foreign-earned profits of U.S. corporations sit in foreign bank accounts unavailable for use absent paying taxes.

There are two main ways to achieve an overseas move. A transaction called an inversion where a U.S. company reincorporates overseas becoming, say, a Bermuda corporation, which was popular in the 2000s. Inversions also can happen when a U.S. company forms an overseas affiliate and the original company becomes a subsidiary of the foreign affiliate. The 2004 American Jobs Creation Act prevented companies pursuing inversions from reaping tax benefits of the transactions if the original stockholders retained 80 percent or more of the new company or if there was not substantial business operation in the new location. Treasury regulations have defined “substantial business operations” as meaning 25 percent of corporate activity thus effectively stopping these so-called “naked” inversions as a means to transfer corporate profits overseas.

Another vehicle to move a U.S. company overseas is through a merger with a foreign company, and this is where the recent uptick has occurred. If a larger foreign company buys the U.S. one then both profits and control effectively move overseas in the newly combined company. If, however, a larger U.S. company buys a smaller overseas one, then control may stay effectively in the United States, with only the profits moved overseas. 

For example, in 2012 Cleveland-based Eaton purchased Cooper Industries PLC in an $11.8 billion merger. After the merger, the new company Eaton Corporation PLC, incorporated in Ireland and headquartered in Cleveland, projected savings of $160 million a year as a result of not being subject to U.S. corporate taxes. So far this year, there have been more than a dozen of similar tax-motivated foreign mergers announced including companies like Chiquita, Pfizer and even some interest behind the drug-store chain Walgreens moving to the United Kingdom. 

See the following discussion of foreign mergers in the DealBook earlier this month following the announcement of two multibillion dollar health care mergers:

“With a[n]…. offer worth $53 billion, AbbVie, a big Chicago-based pharmaceutical company, has succeeded in winning tentative approval to buy the Irish drug maker Shire . If completed, it would be the biggest deal of the year. Also on Monday, Mylan Laboratories, based in Canonsburg, Pa., said it would acquire the international generic drug business from Abbott Laboratories in an all-stock deal valued at $5.3 billion and reincorporate in the Netherlands.”

Solutions to curb corporate flight include lowering corporate taxes to a more competitive rate, decreasing the ownership thresholds for inversions from 80 percent to 50 percent, and excluding tax benefits for foreign-based mergers. Congressional Democrats have circulated several proposals, but Republicans have not expressed interest without comprehensive tax reform. Obama included proposals targeted at foreign mergers in his proposed 2015 budget, which includes decreasing the corporate tax rate, decreasing the ownership threshold for inversions and closing some corporate tax loopholes. While congressional action before the end of the year is unlikely, the strong rhetoric of economic patriotism and corporate defectors has the issue primed for the 2014 election debates.

For a great summary on the issue, see the following report issued earlier this summer by the congressional research service.

 -Anne Tucker 

 

While I will miss my friends at the wonderful SEALS conference, I am excited to be attending and presenting at the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) conference in Seattle next week.

For the ALSB conference, the organizers have set up a Guidebook App.  I am just now exploring all the features, but it looks like an impressive and useful tool.

The App includes:

  • The conference program.
  • The conference schedule.
  • Your schedule. You create your own schedule and can have reminders send to your phone.
  • Full text of all the conference papers, organized by subject, author, and title.
  • An attendee list, where attendees can share their contact information.
  • In-app social networking.
  • Information about exhibitors.
  • A survey.
  • Information about Seattle (restaurants, attractions, etc.) 

There is a free version of Guidebook, but it looks like this ALSB Conference App has features of the rather expensive paid plans.  The free version is limited to 200 downloads and doesn’t appear to allow inclusion of presentation materials.  Given the textbook publisher listed at the bottom of the App, I am guessing that the textbook publisher paid at least part of the cost, though that is pure speculation on my part.

While pricey for the paid plans, this might be something for AALS, SEALS, and other large conference organizers to consider for future years.  The free version may be useful for smaller conferences.     

This week, two of my co-bloggers shared some great insights on the revamped American Apparel board of directors.  See Marcia Narine quoted in The Guardian article American Apparel adds its first woman to revamped board of directors; Joan Heminway, American Apparel 1, NFL 0. For those not following the American Apparel saga, the New York Times recently reported:

The founder and chief executive of American Apparel, Dov Charney, was fired this week because an internal investigation found that he had misused company money and had allowed an employee to post naked photographs of a former female employee who had sued him, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation. 

Beyond the public relations problems surrounding Charney’s departure, American Apparel is struggling financially as sales have dropped dramatically. As an initial step in trying start a turnaround, the company announced four new board members, including the company’s first female director, Colleen Birdnow Brown, former chief executive of Fisher Communications. 

When I opened the Guardian article quoting Marcia, I had another article open in the tab next to it from the Washington Post’s On Leadership section: For women and minorities, advocating for diversity has a downside.  That article explained:

In corporate America, diversity is about as controversial as motherhood and apple pie. CEOs love to tout the number of women in their upper ranks. Human resource departments like to trumpet their diversity programs in glossy reports.

But a new study finds that for female and minority executives, being seen as an advocate for diversity could actually have a downside. The researchers behind the study, which will be presented at the Academy of Management’s annual conference in early August, found that women and minorities who were rated by their peers as being good at managing diverse groups or respecting gender or racial differences also tended to get lower performance ratings. That’s because they may be viewed as “selfishly advancing the social standing of their own low-status demographic groups,” the researchers write, a no-no when it comes to rating good managers.

Please click below to read more.

Continue Reading Women, American Apparel, and the Danger of Advocating for Diversity

As many readers (and all of my friends) know, I am a bit of a sports fan.  Having been a college athlete (field hockey, at Brown University, for trivia buffs), I focus most of my attention on college games.  I even served on The University of Tennessee’s Athletics Board for a few years.  But my Dad and I used to watch professional football and baseball a lot together when I was a kid (still do, when we are in the same place at the right time), so I also maintain a casual interest in professional sports.

I also have an interest in fashion, especially women’s fashion (maybe less well known, except by close friends).  I have friends in the industry and find aspects of it truly fascinating.  I even used to subscribe to Women’s Wear Daily, the fashion industry trade rag.  I am the faculty advisor to the College of Law’s Fashion and Business (FAB) Law student organization.

This personal background is prelude to my interest in two current events stories that I see as parallels.  I am trying to sort them through on a number of levels. Maybe you can help.  Here are the top lines of each story.

  • Last Thursday, the National Football League (NFL) suspended Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice for two games, fined him $58,000 dollars, and asked him to seek counseling after its investigation of an incident relating to a video in which Rice was depicted dragging his then-fiance, now wife, by her hair after punching her in the face (allegedly rendering her unconscious).
  • The very same day, American Apparel (AA) announced a new slate of directors who will assume positions on the AA board in early August as a result of investor intervention and a boardroom blood bath following on lagging profits and continuing investigations of allegations of sexual misconduct (most of it, as I understand it, not new news) against AA’s founder and former CEO and director, Dov Charney, whose management roles at the firm were suspended by the board back in June.

Continue Reading American Apparel 1, NFL 0

The new crowdfunding exemption in section 4(a)(6) of the Securities Act will, once the SEC adopts the rules required to implement it, allow ordinary investors to invest in unregistered securities offerings. Will those unsophisticated investors go down in flames or will they be able to make rational investment choices?

Some proponents of crowdfunding argue that crowdfunding benefits from the so-called “wisdom of the crowd“: that the collective, consensus choice that results from crowdfunding is better than what any individual could do alone, and often as good as expert choices. A recent study seems to support that view.

Two business professors—Ethan R. Mollick at the Wharton School and Ramana Nanda at Harvard—looked at crowdfunding campaigns for theater projects. They submitted those projects to people with expertise in evaluating theater funding applications and compared the expert evaluations to the actual crowdfunding results.

Mollick and Nanda found a strong positive correlation between the projects funded by the crowd and those rated highly by the experts. In other words, crowds were more likely to fund the campaigns the experts preferred. In addition, projects funded by the crowd that were not rated highly by the experts did just as well as the projects chosen by the experts.

Of course, theater projects aren’t the same as securities, but this study should certainly be of interest to those following the securities crowdfunding debate. The full study (44 pages) is available here. If you don’t have time to read the full study, a summary is available here.

I have posted an updated draft of my latest piece, “Corporate Social Responsibility & Concession Theory” (forthcoming __ Wm. & Mary Bus. L. Rev. __) on SSRN (here). Here is the abstract:

This Essay examines three related propositions: (1) Voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) fails to effectively advance the agenda of a meaningful segment of CSR proponents; (2) None of the three dominant corporate governance theories – director primacy, shareholder primacy, or team production theory – support mandatory CSR as a normative matter; and, (3) Corporate personality theory, specifically concession theory, can be a meaningful source of leverage in advancing mandatory CSR in the face of opposition from the three primary corporate governance theories. In examining these propositions, this Essay makes the additional claims that Citizens United: (A) supports the proposition that corporate personality theory matters; (B) undermines one of the key supports of the shareholder wealth maximization norm; and (C) highlights the political nature of this debate. Finally, I note that the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision does not undermine my CSR claims, contrary to the suggestions of some commentators.

I expect to have at least one more meaningful round of edits, so all comments are welcome and appreciated.

As to the last point of the abstract, let me explain why I don’t think Hobby Lobby has meaningfully expanded the ability of corporations to pursue socially responsible actions lacking in any colorable shareholder wealth justification, which, in light of the business judgment rule, is where I believe much of the interesting CSR action is taking place. I’ll first briefly go through my understanding of what the Court held in Hobby Lobby, and then see if anything new is added to our understanding of corporations’ ability to pursue CSR activities. My analysis proceeds roughly as follows:

1. Are corporations capable of exercising religion?

As a matter of statutory construction, determining whether corporations can exercise religion for purposes of the RFRA requires looking to the Dictionary Act, which includes corporations under the definition of “person” unless the context indicates otherwise. I agree with Justice Ginsburg that the context of exercising religion is one that properly excludes corporations. In addition, due to my view of the corporation as being fundamentally a creature of the state, I have Establishment Clause concerns about allowing the recipients of the state’s corporate subsidy to further religious ends via that grant. (I address some of the related unconstitutional conditions arguments here.) But in the end, the Court said corporations can exercise religion, so that’s likely the final word till a Justice retires.

2. Is the exercise of religion by corporations ultra vires?

Given that the Court has deemed corporations capable of exercising religion, the next question is whether they have been granted the power to do so by the state legislatures that created them. In other words, is the exercise of religion ultra vires? When Justice Alito says that “the laws … permit for-profit corporations to pursue ‘any lawful purpose’ or ‘act,’ including the pursuit of profit in conformity with the owners’ religious principles,” I believe he is best understood as affirming that religious exercise, like charitable giving, is not ultra vires, nothing more.

3. Can corporations sacrifice shareholder wealth to further religious exercise?

So, corporations have the ability to exercise religion and it is not ultra vires for them to do so. None of that, however, should change the fact that if the religious exercise does not somehow advance shareholder wealth and any shareholder legitimately complains, then a viable waste or fiduciary duty claim has been asserted. Alito seems to recognize this point when he qualifies his conclusion about the viability of abandoning profit-maximization with: “So long as its owners agree ….” As Jay Brown put it (here), “this is a rule of unanimity…. it doesn’t actually alter the board’s legal duties.” In other words, I agree with my co-blogger Josh Fershee when he argues (here) that Hobby Lobby should not be read to create some new First Amendment defense for controlling shareholders or directors facing viable claims of waste of corporate assets or duty of loyalty violations.

Assuming all the foregoing is correct, I don’t see anything new in Hobby Lobby vis-à-vis a corporation’s ability to engage in CSR activities. Obviously, it doesn’t take much to satisfy the business judgment rule, but that’s not the issue. If there is any new ground here it should arguably create a defense where no rational business purpose is asserted (I don’t believe Hobby Lobby has redefined “business” for purposes of the waste doctrine). That’s precisely what makes benefit corporations special and necessary – they provide such a defense for corporations pursuing activities with a public benefit but open to the challenge that there is no concomitant shareholder wealth benefit. As Robert T. Esposito & Shawn Pelsinger put it (here), “the principal argument for social enterprise forms rests on the assumption that corporate law and its duty to maximize shareholder wealth could not accommodate for-profit, mission-driven entities.”

So, has Hobby Lobby somehow meaningfully shifted the playing field when it comes to CSR? I don’t think so.

Alabama

Last year, when many law schools made no new hires, Alabama was one of the most active law schools on the market. Alabama hired a new dean and five new faculty members.  It appears that Alabama is looking to hire again this year.  

The University of Alabama School of Law is seeking applications from entry level or lateral candidates.   They will accept applications from applicants in all subject areas, but have a particular interest in applicants that research and teach in one or more of the following areas:

business law (including enterprise, finance, and/or securities); administrative regulation (including the regulatory state and/or regulated industries or activities); intellectual property (specifically trademark and copyright); and criminal law (including substantive criminal law and/or criminal procedure).

(Emphasis added, for the benefit of our business law readers.)

More information is available here.  

One of the classic arguments against private securities liability – and in particular, Section 10(b) fraud-on-the-market liability, with its high potential damages – is that it overdeters issuers, thus stifling voluntary disclosures rather than encouraging them.  This was in fact the theory behind the PSLRA’s safe harbor: the statute makes it particularly difficult for private plaintiffs to bring claims based on projections of future performance, in part because of Congress’s fear that expansive liability would dissuade issuers from making projections at all.

Two new empirical studies challenge this common wisdom.

The first, Private Litigation Costs and Voluntary Disclosure: Evidence from Foreign Cross-Listed Firms, by James P. Naughton et al., uses the Supreme Court’s decision in National Australia Bank v. Morrison as a natural experiment.  That decision abruptly removed the specter of private Section 10(b) liability based on securities sold on a foreign exchange.  The authors compare voluntary earnings guidance offered by firms whose securities are cross-listed in the US and abroad before and after Morrison to determine how the diminished threat of liability affects issuer behavior. 

As it turns out, the authors found that earnings guidance decreased for those firms whose securities are cross-listed, as compared to counterparts whose securities are listed solely in the United States.  The authors also found that the effect was stronger for firms whose home country had a weak regulatory structure – i.e., firms that did not expect that enforcement in their home country would fill the void left by Morrison.  Finally, the authors found stronger effects for firms with a greater proportion of non-US listed shares – i.e., firms most affected by the Morrison decision.

The second study, Carrot or Stick? The Shift from Voluntary to Mandatory Disclosure of Risk Factors, by Karen K. Nelson and Adam C. Pritchard, analyzes “risk factor” disclosures.  Under the PSLRA, issuers are insulated from liability for false projections of future performance if the projections are accompanied by sufficiently detailed “cautionary statements,” i.e., descriptions of the variables that could cause actual results to differ from the projections.  In this study, the authors compared risk factor disclosures by firms with a high risk of litigation to firms with low litigation risk, and found that higher litigation risk was correlated with more detailed risk disclosures that were more frequently updated from year to year and were presented in more readable language.  The effect was strongest prior to 2005, when risk disclosure was voluntary; after 2005, when the SEC made risk disclosure mandatory, the effect recedes, although higher risk firms continue to provide more risk factor disclosure.  The authors also show that investors absorb this information: for higher risk firms, there is a correlation between risk factor disclosures and investors’ post-disclosure risk assessments.

These two studies together provide interesting evidence that firms react to the specter of private liability by increasing, rather than decreasing, disclosures.  Moreover, the Nelson/Pritchard study in particular concludes that these increased disclosures are in fact meaningful to investors.