Business Regulation – Page 19 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Can Google-TV Help Liberate Cable-TV?

Post author:Erik Ugland
Post published:May 24, 2010
Post category:Business Regulation Computer Law First Amendment Media & Journalism

Tech nerds and media junkies have been buzzing lately about Google’s announcement that it will soon rollout Google-TV — a new device/platform that will turn people’s televisions into portals for online video and other web content.

Google representatives unveiled the project last week at a developers conference where they staged a Steve Jobs-like showcase that included animated demonstrations and bold statements about the end of TV as we know it.

Much of this was puffery, of course, but there is no denying Google’s determination to expand its dominion over the communications universe, nor the inevitability of the web’s eventual absorption of traditional television.

These two things terrify broadcast and cable executives. But the advent of web television might benefit traditional TV businesses –- particularly cable companies –- in one important category: First Amendment protection.

Put This in Your PIPE . . .

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:April 21, 2010
Post category:Business Regulation Legal Scholarship

3L Douglas Hoffer has a new paper on SSRN describing and defending “PIPE financing” — a form of corporate financing that has taken off in the past fifteen years. PIPE financing permits corporations to raise money by selling equity through a two-step process that diminishes the regulatory burdens normally associated with public offerings.

PIPE deals have drawn negative comments from other scholars and the SEC, but Douglas thinks the critics have failed to appreciate the important benefits of PIPE financing. His paper, entitled “Quagmire: Is the SEC Stuck in a Misguided War Against PIPE Financing?,” will be published in Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law. The abstract appears after the jump.

Was an Action against Goldman Sachs Inevitable?

Post author:Joseph Schuster
Post published:April 20, 2010
Post category:Business Regulation

While reading through news on the SEC’s case against Goldman Sachs, I can’t help but wonder if the charge would have been brought regardless of what happened in the market.

The action against Goldman Sachs comes from their arrangement and sale of mortgage backed collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). In 2006, John Paulson, approached Goldman Sachs with an interest to short housing prices. Paulson clearly believed at the time, correctly, that housing prices were at unsustainable levels; he believed that there was a bubble in the market, and he wanted to make a bet that prices would decrease. In order for Paulson to make a bet against housing prices, there needed to be somebody on the other end to make a bet that housing prices were going to increase. The very essence of a CDO is that there necessarily must be two opposing parties to take different views on a future direction of a product or market.