Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

[Editor's Note: Over the past month, faculty members have been posting on upcoming judicial decisions of particular interest. This is the fourth post in the series.]

In January of 2011, the Securities and Exchange Commission, as part of its implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, began requiring U.S. public companies to provide their shareholders with a non-binding vote on the compensation of certain executive officers. This “say on pay” gives shareholders an advisory say on the amount of compensation paid to those executives. Related disclosure is also designed to prompt the board to consider how the “say on pay” vote affects its broader executive compensation policies and practices.

The Dodd-Frank Act specifically provides that the shareholder say-on-pay vote is not intended to affect directors’ fiduciary duties. Despite this, in at least two cases, shareholders have sued directors for breaches of their fiduciary duties, primarily on the basis that they implemented compensation practices that shareholder had voted against. Read more »

It’s not really my area, but I’ve been especially interested this week in reading about the new civil fraud case brought by the State of New York against Ernst & Young.  The case arises from E&Y’s auditing work for Lehman Brothers, an early and important casualty of the financial crisis.  In this post, Matt Taibbi explains the basics of the Repo 105 transactions that Lehman used to hide its precarious financial position.  E&Y is now in trouble for signing off on Lehman’s questionable accounting statements.

For some helpful commentary on E&Y’s expected defense, see this post by Caleb Newquist at Going Concern.  In essence, E&Y’s position seems to be that it cannot be held liable under the New York law because it was Lehman, not E&Y, that produced the misleading financial statements and that used the statements to sell billions of dollars of securities before the collapse.  Apparently, there is no precedent under the state law for the prosecution of an accounting firm based on its role as an auditor, so the courts may have to wrestle with some difficult questions in the case.

What particularly interests me about the case is the way it echoes the prosecution of Arthur Anderson, which destroyed the venerable accounting firm as a result of its role in the Enron collapse.   Read more »

This is the second post on this topic.  Good to see you back for more!  Based on all of the notes that I received following my first post, the readership levels of this site are much higher than I expected.  Thanks for all of the kind feedback and responses.

I think that some of my former colleagues over at Stark Investments are thinking that they created a blogging monster (while at Stark I maintained a blog and I bet that some are thinking that I have taken things to a new extreme….).  While on that topic, I did want to mention a couple of tidbits about Stark Investments (it seems that some folks are still interested in what I have to say on the topic).

The original founders of Stark – Brian Stark and Mike Roth – were true pioneers in the hedge fund industry and played an important role in the evolution of this space and in paving the way for all those that followed into the business (including myself).  At its core, the hedge fund business (or “alternatives business” as it is commonly referred to) is based on the goal of providing absolute returns in an uncorrelated fashion (providing more attractive risk-adjusted returns than can be found from other investment techniques and strategies).  As they say about sports and hitting a baseball, achieving these objectives is one of the hardest things to do in any profession.  In any event, Brian and Mike have been doing this as long as anyone in the business.   I had a great 10 years working for the two of them and I learned much from both of their styles.

 Ok, enough of that stuff.  Let’s talk about financial regulation.  The last major overhaul of the regulatory structure of our financial markets, not surprisingly, occurred following the Great Depression.  The regulatory reaction to the stock market crash was the adoption of two cornerstone pieces of legislation which still provide the backbone of our regulatory structure — the Securities Act of 1933 (the “’33 Act”) and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “34 Act”). The 33 Act, administered by the then newly created Securities & Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), provides for the registration of the initial distribution of most securities and the 34 Act imposes ongoing reporting and disclosure requirements.

 The policy behind the Acts was that disclosure of material facts and overall transparency in the activities of the securities exchanges would provide confidence in the markets and in the companies issuing securities.  Increased transparency, in turn, would promote much-needed liquidity which makes the markets function in an orderly fashion (the pre-Depression markets were characterized by insider dealing and a significant laissez-faire attitude towards regulation).  This “sunlight theory of regulation” is based on the assumption that if investors are given all of the necessary information they will make wise investment decisions. Commentators have characterized the ’33 Act as follows (these quotes, some of my personnel favorites, can also be found on the State of Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions website):

• Congress did not take away from the citizen his inalienable right to make a fool of himself. It simply attempted to prevent others from making a fool of him.
• As to its efficacy in regulating securities issuers, the sunlight theory may be summed up by a saying: Those who are forced to undress in public will presumably pay some attention to their figures.

Please remember these quotes because I believe that they are instructive in thinking about the role of regulation in light of the current environment.   Notably, it is my view that “full and fair disclosure” was not a major problem during our most recent financial crises – in my mind, the much bigger issue (as noted in my first blog) was excessive risk-taking and greed:  in short, too many people made fools of themselves….

My father recently guided me to some sections of Tony Blair’s newly released memoirs A Journey: My Political Life, which were of interest to me on the topic of financial regulation.  The Prime Minister had this to say of the markets, government and regulation:

 First, “the market” did not fail. One part of one sector did. The way sub-prime debt was securitized, spliced and diced and sold on with no real appreciation of underlying risk or value was wrong, irresponsible and immensely damaging. Some of the rewards, the huge payouts for shuffling around securities, the bonuses, are not just presentationally awful; they can’t be justified and, at worst, have helped create a propensity to “do the deal” whatever the long-term merits for short-term gain, in a way that significantly contributed to the crisis. All this is correct and should be acted on. However, such practice should not define or represent the whole of the banking sector, let alone the whole financial sector, let alone “the market.”

Second, government also failed. Regulations failed. Politicians failed. Monetary policy failed. Debt became way too cheap. But that wasn’t a conspiracy of the banks; it was a consequence of the apparently benign confluence of loose money policy and low inflation. The responsibility for the crisis should be shared, not borne by the market alone or even by the banks alone.

Third, the failure was one of understanding. We didn’t spot it. You can argue we should have, but we didn’t. Furthermore—and this is vital for where we go now on regulation—it wasn’t that we were powerless to prevent it even if we had seen it coming; it wasn’t a failure of regulation in the sense that we lacked the power to intervene. Had regulators said to the leaders that a huge crisis was about to break, we wouldn’t have said: There’s nothing we can do about it until we get more regulation through. We would have acted. But they didn’t say that.

My own beliefs flow from a similar line of thinking.  That is, our financial system has failed by not having a natural governor of its activities.  One of the interesting ironies, in my experience, is that during the creation of bubble-like conditions all of the players in the financial system act as if their interests are aligned.  Investors, speculators, bankers, and policy-makers all tend to act in a manner that is designed to “let the good times roll.”   The markets need a voice of reason in these environments – someone or something that can provide balance in recognizing the signs of a bubble, in recognizing where we are in terms of the investment cycle, in acting as a counter-balance to the “this time its different” mentality, and in ensuring prudent action during these periods.  If we do not find a way to do this then we will repeat these cycles – and in my mind they will occur with even more frequency and ferocity.

So, it will be in the next blog post where I will discuss whether the currently proposed regulatory overhaul can help mitigate against these risks.  That is, can the prevention of “too big to fail,” increased capital ratios among large banks, and the 2,315-pages of financial regulatory system legislation act as the “voice of reason” which will prevent future financial crises….and what does this all mean from an underlying policy perspective?

Congratulations to 3L Laura Steele, the winner of this year’s Frank DeGuire Award for the best student comment in the Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review.  Laura’s terrific comment, entitled “Actual or Hypothetical: Determining the Proper Test for Trademark Licensee Rights in Bankruptcy,” is available on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

As trademark rights become an increasingly valuable asset in Chapter 11 reorganizations, it is critical for Congress and the courts to clarify how trademarks will be treated in bankruptcy, particularly where the debtor is a trademark licensee. Without clarity, Chapter 11 reorganization may not be a viable option.

This Comment urges that trademark licensees should not be stripped of a license simply because the licensee enters bankruptcy. Rather, where a licensee intends only to continue using an existing license under the terms of the existing agreement with the licensor, the licensee’s use of that license should be uninterrupted during reorganization. This recommendation, contrary to the position of trademark licensors, will not invade the province of trademark owners to control their marks.

To support this recommendation, this Comment examines the statutory frameworks of both trademark and bankruptcy law, legislative history of the Bankruptcy Code, and cases that illuminate the current circuit split over the rights of a trademark licensee in bankruptcy. Building on these elements, this Comment outlines an analytical approach that strikes a balance between the need for business reorganization and the duty of a trademark licensor to exercise control over its mark.

Last summer, Eric Dash of the New York Times wrote an excellent article on the problems associated with big business in the U.S.  Dash noted that almost 100 years ago, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote prophetically about the “curse of bigness.”  Justice Brandeis denounced generally the influence that big business had on U.S. politics and its economy.

Today, Brandies’s “curse of bigness” is incorporated into the less pejorative term for large U.S. companies — companies that are “too big to fail.”  Certainly in light of the recent U.S. financial crisis, people are well aware of the influence that these large U.S. companies have on U.S. politics and its economy.   But these “too big to fail” companies may also be creating moral hazards in business operations, and the U.S. has yet to establish a unified system for dealing with the business of bigness.  Read more »

First, thank you for the invitation to be the March Student Blogger.  I have significant experience in blogs.  But perhaps unfortunately for this blog, that experience is restricted to Nebraska football and Lost blogs.  And I don’t think this is the proper forum for discussions of the Huskers’ 2011 recruiting class or how the Valenzetti Equation may answer all your questions regarding Lost.  However, I am open to requests during my March tenure.

Moving on.

Several blogs on this site have addressed election issues and reform in the judicial and political spheres.   Yet, despite imminent changes with regard to the election of corporate directors, any discussion of corporate election reform has been noticeably absent.  I do not doubt that the rules regarding the election of directors will change significantly this year.

Specifically, on June 10, 2009, the SEC published proposed amendments to the federal proxy rules that would facilitate shareholders’ ability to nominate directors to company boards of directors. Under the current director election rules, shareholders seeking to nominate a competing slate of director candidates have to bear all costs of a proxy campaign.  Yet, all costs for the campaigns of the incumbent board’s nominees are paid for out of corporate funds.  That advantage to the board’s nominees coupled with the significant costs in mounting a proxy contest serve as effective barriers to dissident shareholders seeking to initiate an election contest. Read more »

The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC strikes down as unconstitutional a federal law that prohibits corporations and unions from using general treasury funds to make independent expenditures that expressly advocate the election or defeat of candidates for office.  The majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy, ignores hundreds of years of Supreme Court history in interpreting the subjects of federalism, free markets, and free speech.  In its place, Justice Kennedy presents a textualist interpretation of the First Amendment that is divorced from any history or context.  Justice Kennedy engages in the sort of “faux originalism” (syn. “fake,” “artificial,” “false”) that has been criticized by Judge Richard Posner.  Kennedy places a historical glaze on his own personal values and policy preferences, and calls the result the “original understanding” of the First Amendment.

As such, Citizens United v. FEC stands with District of Columbia v. Heller, the Second Amendment case decided in 2008, as an example of the Justices slapping the “originalist” label on a profoundly un-originalist interpretation of the Bill of Rights.  It is appropriate to view the two cases together.  Both are exercises in raw political power employed in order to accomplish conservative objectives.  Both ignore hundreds of years of understanding about the meaning of the relevant constitutional provisions, in favor of a meaning derived by taking the words of the Amendment out of context.  And both embrace interpretations of the constitutional Amendment at issue that are inconsistent with the meaning ascribed to that same language by the intellectual father of originalism, Robert Bork.  In the same way that modern scholars deride the “Lochner era” as a misguided period in American Constitutional Law, I believe that future scholars and judges will recognize and reject the intellectual dishonesty of the “Heller era.” Read more »

In one of his characteristically thoughtful blog postings (available here), Ed Fallone argues that market regulation follows the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states (to paraphrase) that in any closed system, disorder will reign over time.  Ed argues that this principle holds true for federal securities regulation, where technological and market changes have made the comprehensive statutory scheme of market regulation obsolete.  With respect to non-financial institutions, he proposes (consistent with the Obama administration’s proposal) replacing our current scheme of detailed disclosure rules with regulation that focuses on the consumer (the investor), and the consumer’s need for multiple products to choose from as well as information to make product comparisons.

It does seem to make sense to consider the needs of investors in creating legislation aimed at protecting investors.  But in my view, any new regulatory scheme aimed at protecting investors should leave to the states the regulation over business organizations’ internal affairs. Read more »

In 1789, as the inchoate American government was climbing out of the mountainous debt left over from the Revolutionary War, a thorny political problem emerged.  While most of the chattering class was consumed with the debate over whether the states’ war debt should be federalized, another far more visceral controversy arose.  Because the Continental Congress lacked funds during the war, the Revolution was funded partly by wealthy private citizens who invested in bonds.  As a result of the lack of governmental money, many American soldiers were given worthless IOUs at the end of the war, as states scampered for a way to give the patriots their back pay.  Many of these soldiers panicked, and sold their IOUs to speculators for as little as fifteen cents on the dollar.  The problem was, once the federal government began repaying the debt, the value of the bonds soared.  So who should get the money: the patriots who fought bravely for their country and only sold the IOUs because of fear they would get nothing from their government, or the speculators?

Read more »

At first blush, one would not think that Barney Frank and Stephen Hawking would have anything in common.  The first is the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and is currently conducting hearings on the regulatory reform of the financial markets.  The second is the noted University of Cambridge professor of theoretical physics and the author of the best selling book A Brief History of Time.

 However, in my mind both men are associated with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  This law of physics states that the entropy of an isolated system always increases over time.  Stephen Hawking described it in more comprehensible terms in A Brief History of Time:

It is a common experience that disorder will increase if things are left to themselves.  . . .  In any closed system disorder, or entropy, always increases with time.

 Therefore, when I think of Hawking, I think of someone who can explain the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  When I think of Barney Frank, I think of someone who is desperately trying to avoid its operation.

I would contend that all forms of market regulation follow the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  In each case, a comprehensive statutory scheme is enacted as law, it imposes a closed system of rules on market actors, and over time the scheme inexorably breaks down.  Federal securities regulation, which began with the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, provides the perfect case history of this principle in action. Read more »

The National Law Journal recently reported that the law firm of Howrey & Simon has adopted an innovative training program for new associates.  Newly hired lawyers will serve a two year “apprenticeship” prior to being fully integrated into the law firm.  This program will reduce the number and the compensation of the law school graduates hired by the firm, and it is part of Howrey’s overall program to eliminate “lockstep” salary increases for its associates.

Lawyers in Howrey’s apprenticeship program will be paid significantly less than the going rate for first year associates at other large law firms.  During their first year, the new associates will take firm sponsored classes on legal writing and gain practical experience by working on pro bono matters.  During their second year, the associates in the program will spend several months “embedded” at client sites where their work will be charged at a reduced billing rate.  The law firm’s managing partner compared the apprenticeship program to the training programs typically employed in the medical and accounting professions.

 The Howrey program provides an opportunity to reconsider the entire continuum of legal education: a process that begins with undergraduate instruction, continues through law school, and is perpetuated by continuing legal education requirements.  From time to time, each stage in the continuum comes under scrutiny, as Rick Esenberg’s post on Reengineering Law School illustrates.  In my opinion, the continuum should be viewed holistically when we evaluate whether we are succeeding at training competent and ethical members of the legal profession.  Law schools, law firms and the state bar all need to cooperate in order to ensure that there are no gaps in the preparation that new lawyers receive as they start their careers.  As a member of the Wisconsin Legal Education Commission in 1996, I argued in favor of a program of mandatory skills-based CLE instruction for recent bar admittees.  Many of our students are undoubtedly pleased that the State Bar chose not to implement this particular Commission recommendation.

 Given my predisposition in favor of practical training, I should be supportive of the Howrey apprenticeship model.  Instead, I find myself troubled.  In particular, I am wary of the idea of embedding future corporate lawyers within a client’s legal department for any significant period of time. Read more »

Nadelle Grossman has two new corporate law papers on SSRN.  The first, entitled “Turning a Short-Term Fling into a Long-Term Commitment: Board Duties in a New Era,” deals with the timely topic of corporate leaders making strategic decisions based on short-term profits without regard to long-term risk.  As a solution, she proposes changes in the legal duties owed by corporate directors.  Here is the abstract:

Corporate boards face significant pressure to make decisions that maximize profits in the short run. That pressure comes in part from executives who are financially rewarded for short-term profits despite the long-term risks associated with those profit-making activities. The current financial crisis, where executives at AIG and numerous other institutions ignored the long-term risks associated with their mortgage-backed securities investments, arose largely because those executives were compensated for the short-term profits generated by those investments despite their longer-term risks. Pressure on boards for short-term profits also comes from activist investors who seek to make quick money off of trading in stocks whose prices overly reflect short-term firm values.

Yet this excessive focus on producing short-term profits runs counter to the interests of non-short-termist investors and other corporate constituents, as well as our economy and society as a whole, in creating corporate enterprises that are profitable on an enduring basis. Once again, the current financial crisis provides a lens through which we can see the distressing impact — both to individual businesses as well as to the entire U.S community — of an excessive focus on short-term profits.

I propose a solution to address this problem of short-termism. Under my proposal, directors would be required to make decisions that are in the long-term best interest of stockholders and the corporation under their fiduciary duties. I explain in the article why I propose fixing the short-termism problem through fiduciary duties as well as how, practically, my proposal would be implemented.

This paper is forthcoming in the Michigan Journal of Law Reform.  Read more »