Archives For corporate law

Contemplating Disclosure-Based Insider Trading Regulation

Thom Lambert —  15 June 2012

TOTM friend Stephen Bainbridge is editing a new book on insider trading.  He kindly invited me to contribute a chapter, which I’ve now posted to SSRN (download here).  In the chapter, I consider whether a disclosure-based approach might be the best way to regulate insider trading.

As law and economics scholars have long recognized, informed stock trading may create both harms and benefits to society.  With respect to harms, defenders of insider trading restrictions have maintained that informed stock trading is ”unfair” to uninformed traders and causes social welfare losses by (1) encouraging deliberate mismanagement or disclosure delays aimed at generating trading profits; (2) infringing corporations’ informational property rights, thereby discouraging the production of valuable information; and (3) reducing trading efficiency by increasing the “bid-ask” spread demanded by stock specialists, who systematically lose on trades with insiders.

Proponents of insider trading liberalization have downplayed these harms.  With respect to the fairness argument, they contend that insider trading cannot be “unfair” to investors who know in advance that it might occur and nonetheless choose to trade.  And the purported efficiency losses occasioned by insider trading, liberalization proponents say, are overblown.  There is little actual evidence that insider trading reduces liquidity by discouraging individuals from investing in the stock market, and it might actually increase such liquidity by providing benefits to investors in equities.  With respect to the claim that insider trading creates incentives for delayed disclosures and value-reducing management decisions, advocates of deregulation claim that such mismanagement is unlikely for several reasons.  First, managers face reputational constraints that will discourage such misbehavior.  In addition, managers, who generally work in teams, cannot engage in value-destroying mismanagement without persuading their colleagues to go along with the strategy, which implies that any particular employee’s ability to engage in mismanagement will be constrained by her colleagues’ attempts to maximize firm value or to gain personally by exposing proposed mismanagement.  With respect to the property rights concern, deregulation proponents contend that, even if material nonpublic information is worthy of property protection, the property right need not be a non-transferable interest granted to the corporation; efficiency considerations may call for the right to be transferable and/or initially allocated to a different party (e.g., to insiders).  Finally, legalization proponents observe that there is little empirical evidence to support the concern that insider trading increases bid-ask spreads.

Turning to their affirmative case, proponents of insider trading legalization (beginning with Geoff’s dad, Henry Manne) have primarily emphasized two potential benefits of the practice.  First, they observe that insider trading increases stock market efficiency (i.e., the degree to which stock prices reflect true value), which in turn facilitates efficient resource allocation among capital providers and enhances managerial decision-making by reducing agency costs resulting from overvalued equity.  In addition, the right to engage in insider trading may constitute an efficient form of managerial compensation.

Not surprisingly, proponents of insider trading restrictions have taken issue with both of these purported benefits. With respect to the argument that insider trading leads to more efficient securities prices, ban proponents retort that trading by insiders conveys information only to the extent it is revealed, and even then the message it conveys is “noisy” or ambiguous, given that insiders may trade for a variety of reasons, many of which are unrelated to their possession of inside information.  Defenders of restrictions further maintain that insider trading is an inefficient, clumsy, and possibly perverse compensation mechanism.

The one thing that is clear in all this is that insider trading is a “mixed bag”  Sometimes such trading threatens to harm social welfare, as in SEC v. Texas Gulf Sulphur, where informed trading threatened to prevent a corporation from usurping a valuable opportunity.  But sometimes such trading creates net social benefits, as in Dirks v. SEC, where the trading revealed massive corporate fraud.

As regular TOTM readers will know, optimal regulation of “mixed bag” business practices (which are all over the place in the antitrust world) requires consideration of the costs of underdeterring “bad” conduct and of overdeterring “good” conduct.  Collectively, these constitute a rule’s “error costs.”  Policy makers should also consider the cost of administering the rule at issue; as they increase the complexity of the rule to reduce error costs, they may unwittingly drive up “decision costs” for adjudicators and business planners.  The goal of the policy maker addressing a mixed bag practice, then, should be to craft a rule that minimizes the sum of error and decision costs.

Adjudged under that criterion, the currently prevailing “fraud-based” rules on insider trading fail.  They are difficult to administer, and they occasion significant error cost by deterring many instances of socially desirable insider trading.  The more restrictive “equality of information-based” approach apparently favored by regulators fares even worse.  A contractarian, laissez-faire approach favored by many law and economics scholars would represent an improvement over the status quo, but that approach, too, may be suboptimal, for it does nothing to bolster the benefits or reduce the harms associated with insider trading.

My new book chapter proposes a disclosure-based approach that would help reduce the sum of error and decision costs resulting from insider trading and its regulation.  Under the proposed approach, authorized informed trading would be permitted as long as the trader first disclosed to a centralized, searchable database her insider status, the fact that she was trading on the basis of material, nonpublic in­formation, and the nature of her trade.  Such an approach would (1) enhance the market efficiency benefits of insider trading by facilitating “trade decod­ing,” while (2) reducing potential costs stemming from deliberate misman­agement, disclosure delays, and infringement of informational property rights.  By “accentuating the positive” and “eliminating the negative” conse­quences of informed trading, the proposed approach would perform better than the legal status quo and the leading proposed regulatory alternatives at minimizing the sum of error and decision costs resulting from insider trading restrictions.

Please download the paper and send me any thoughts.

In 10b-5, corporate law, disclosure regulation, error costs, financial regulation, insider trading, markets, regulation, securities regulation, SSRN
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UCLA Law’s Lowell Milken Institute Law Teaching Fellowship Now Accepting Applications

Josh Wright —  20 December 2011

I’m pleased to pass along the following information from the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law:

 

Introduction

  • The Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law is now accepting applications for the Lowell Milken Institute Law Teaching Fellowship.
  • This fellowship is a full-time, year-round, one or two academic-year position (approximately July 2012 through June 2013 or June 2014).  The position involves law teaching, legal and policy research and writing, preparing to go on the law teaching market, and assisting with organizing projects such as conferences and workshops, and teaching.  No degree will be offered as part of the Fellowship program.

Eligibility

  • Fellowship candidates must hold a JD degree from an ABA accredited law school and be committed to a career of law teaching and scholarship in the field of  business law and policy.  Applicants should have demonstrated an outstanding aptitude for independent legal research, preferably through research and/or writing as a law student or through exceptional legal experience after law school. Law Teaching Fellowship candidates must have strong academic records that will make them highly competitive for law teaching jobs.

Fellowship Requirements

The Fellowship program is year-round, over one or two academic years, during which time the Fellow will:

  • complete at least one substantial scholarly publication and present the publication as a work-in-progress to the UCLA School of Law faculty;
  • teach at least one class per academic year of the appointment;
  • work closely with a faculty mentor in order to observe and participate in teaching, as well as to complete a publishable scholarly piece;
  • assist the Institute’s Executive Director with other projects relating to the Institute’s work, including organizing conferences and other events,  research, publications, public education and outreach efforts;
  • permit the Institute to publish any article(s) resulting from the Fellowship—as long as such publication will not interfere with the Fellow’s ability to publish such articles in a law journal; and
  • acknowledge the Institute’s assistance in any published work that is facilitated by the Fellowship.

Fellowship Benefits

The unique features of this Fellowship include opportunities to:

  • develop expertise in business law and public policy;
  • work with a faculty mentor;
  • develop expertise in business law teaching;
  • complete a published piece of research before entering the law teaching market;
  • obtain faculty recommendations and support for law teaching jobs;
  • participate in the rich mixture of scholarly symposia, invited lectures, and conferences of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy; and
  • participate in UCLA School of Law’s rich interdisciplinary scholarly symposia, lectures, and conferences.

Application Material and Deadlines

To apply for the 2012-2013 Lowell Milken Institute Law Teaching Fellowship, please submit the following materials by March 1, 2012:

  • A cover letter summarizing your qualifications for the fellowship;
  • A current resume, including a list of published works;
  • An official law school transcript;
  • Contact information for three references, including at least one from a law school professor familiar with your scholarly potential;
  • A detailed research proposal, no longer than five single-spaced pages in length; and
  • A description of teaching interests (course abstract and plan for class or seminar preferred)

Interested candidates should submit materials as a single PDF or Word.doc file to estrada@law.ucla.edu.

Equal Opportunity Employer

The University of California is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer, and seeks candidates committed to the highest standards of scholarship and professional activities and to a campus climate that supports equality and diversity.

In business, corporate law, law school
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Abolishing corporate personhood: still stupid

Larry Ribstein —  13 December 2011

Doug Mataconis criticizes efforts in Congress to overrule Citizens United by abolishing corporate personhood (HT Bainbridge).

I’ve already addressed this issue, noting among other things that “the loss of personhood would not have the slightest effect under Citizens United” because that case reasoned that the speaker’s identity is irrelevant.  In any event, I pointed out that “if personhood matters at all under Citizens United and subsequent decisions, the loss of personhood actually could be a constitutional boon to corporations.” That’s because “the post-Bellotti cases on corporate political speech showed that it is easier to deny First Amendment rights if the speech is attributed to an artificial person.”

In general, as I noted in my earlier post, this attempted sneak attack around CU crosses St. Hubbins-Tufnel fine line between clever and stupid.

In constitutional law, corporate law
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The jurisprudential significance of blogs

Larry Ribstein —  11 November 2011

Gordon Smith notes that this issue came up at a Columbia conference on Delaware law and courts.  He observes that the Glom gets a plug on a speaker’s slide.  So I’ll mention that above the Glom on the pictured slide we find. . . Truth on the Market.

In corporate law
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The emerging venue battle in El Paso/Kinder Morgan

Larry Ribstein —  22 October 2011

T-R’s Alison Frankel writes (HT Pileggi) about dueling suits in Texas and Delaware challenging the El Paso/Kinder Morgan merger: Three class actions in Texas state court and two class actions and a shareholder derivative suit in Delaware Chancery.

It looks like this merger may bring to a head the “escape from Delaware” phenomenon I discussed a year ago.

In corporate law, Jurisdictional competition, litigation
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Debating the business judgment rule

Larry Ribstein —  5 October 2011

Alison Frankel gripes about a NJ judge’s ruling throwing out a shareholders’ derivative suit seeking to hold the J & J board accountable for problems concerning the company’s Rispardal drug. Frankel thinks the bad faith standard the court applied is not high enough.

Ted Frank responds that the fact that the company had settled criminal allegations doesn’t mean the board was irresponsible given big companies’ exposure to prosecutorial overreaching (here’s my thoughts on the problems with prosecutors).  He notes that given huge potential penalties and legal costs “even a risk-neutral set of executives would refuse to go to trial on criminal charges that they had a 95% chance of winning.”  As Ted says:

The issue is this: first, any corporate law is going to have to balance false negatives (valid suits against directors being thrown out prematurely) and false positives (invalid suits against directors costing tens of millions of dollars in time and money to resolve). Any opening up of the courtroom doors to challenge directors will reduce false negatives at the expense of more false positives; any increase in the burden to bring suit will reduce false positives at the expense of more false negatives.

Anyway, Ted continues, shareholders of NJ corporations can decide to invest in firms incorporated elsewhere if they think NJ law is too lenient on directors, aptly citing my and O’Hara’s The Law Market.

Of course Frankel might argue that the business judgment rule that the court used to decide the case is ubiquitous, leaving plaintiffs with little choice. Indeed, the only significant dissent is Nevada which is, if anything, even easier on directors than NJ.   Frankel might also argue that this indicates state corporation law is rigged for managers and that we would do better under federal law.  Perhaps what we need is a super Dodd-Frank/SOX on steroids that preempts state law and exposes managers to suits like the one NJ dismissed.

I would respond that the universal acceptance of the business judgment rule represents the market’s rejection of Frankel’s position.  If Frankel wants to complain that the market for corporate law is imperfect,  she would need to persuade me that shareholders are better off in the clutches of Congress.

In corporate governance, corporate law, federalism, fiduciary duties, Jurisdictional competition
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SEC Organizational Reform Hearing

J.W. Verret —  14 September 2011

The semester is off to a bang.  I arrived at Stanford Monday to start teaching in the Law School and begin a research fellowship at the Hoover Institution.  Yesterday I hiked in the mountains overlooking the SF Bay.  Today I am flying back to DC (and blogging in flight, how cool is that) to testify Thursday before the House Committee on Financial Services alongside SEC Chairman Schapiro, former Chairman Pitt, and former Commissioner Paul Atkins on proposed legislation from Congressman Scott Garrett and Chairman Spencer Bachus to reform and reshape the SEC.

Part of the hearing, titled “Fixing the Watchdog: Legislative Proposals to Improve and Enhance the Securities and Exchange Commission” will deal with the study on SEC organizational reform mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act and conducted by the Boston Consulting Group.  Frankly, I found it full of quotes from the consultant’s desk manual, with references to “no-regrets implementation,” “business process optimization” and “multi-faceted transformation.”  I believe the technical term is gobbledy-gook.

The remainder of the hearing will involve a discussion of the SEC Organizational Reform Act (or “Bachus Bill”) and the SEC Regulatory Accountability Act (or “Garrett Bill”).  The Bachus Bill proposes a number of organizational reforms, like breaking up the new Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation to embed the economists there back in to the various functional divisions.  The Garrett Bill seeks to strengthen the guiding principles originally formulated in the NSMIA amendments by elaborating on how the agency can meet its economic analysis burden in rule-making.

I thought I would give TOTM readers a sneak peak at my testimony.  I aim to make two key points.  First, sincere economic analysis is important.  SEC rules have consistently done a poor job of meeting the mandate of the NSMIA to consider the effect of new rules on efficiency, competition, and capital formation, and they will continue to do a poor job until they hire more economists and give them increased authority in the enforcement and the rule-making process.  Second, the SEC’s mission should include an explicit requirement that it consider the effect of new rules on the state based system of business entity formation.

Here’s a sneak peak at my testimony for TOTM readers:

Chairman Bachus, Ranking Member Frank, and distinguished members of the Committee, it is a privilege to testify today.  My name is J.W. Verret.  I am an Assistant Professor of Law at Stanford Law School where I teach corporate and securities law.  I also serve as a Fellow at the Hoover Institution and as a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus
Center at George Mason University.  I am currently on leave from the George Mason Law School.

My testimony today will focus on two important and necessary reforms.

First, I will argue that clarifying the SEC’s legislative mandate to conduct economic analysis and a commitment of authority to economists on staff at the SEC are both vital to ensure that new rules work for investors rather than against them.  Second, I will urge that the SEC be required to consider the impact of new rules on the state-based system of business incorporation.

Every President since Ronald Reagan has requested that independent agencies like the SEC commit to sincere economic cost-benefit analysis of new rules.  Further, unlike many other independent agencies the SEC is subject to a legislative mandate that it consider the effect of most new rules on investor protection, efficiency, competition and capital formation.

The latter three principles have been interpreted as requiring a form of cost-benefit economic analysis using empirical evidence, economic theory, and compliance cost data.  These tools help to determine rule impact on stock prices and stock exchange competitiveness and measure compliance costs that are passed on to investors.

Three times in the last ten years private parties have successfully challenged SEC rules for failure to meet these requirements.  Over the three cases, no less than five distinguished jurists on the DC Circuit, appointed during administrations of both Republican and Democratic Presidents, found the SEC’s economic analysis wanting. One
failure might have been an aberation, three failures out of three total challenges is a dangerous pattern.

Many SEC rules have treated the economic analysis requirements as an afterthought. This is in part a consequence of the low priority the Commission places on economic analysis, evidenced by the fact that economists have no significant authority in the rule-making process or the enforcement process.

As an example of the level of analysis typically given to significant rule-making, consider the SEC’s final release of its implementation of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.  The SEC estimated that the rule would impose an annual cost of $91,000 per publicly traded company.  In fact a subsequent SEC study five years later found average implementation costs for 404(b) of $2.87 million per company.

That error in judgment only applies to estimates of direct costs.  The SEC gave no consideration whatsoever to the more important category of indirect costs, like the impact of the rule on the volume of new offerings or IPOs on US exchanges.

In Business Roundtable v. SEC alone the SEC estimates it dedicated over $2.5 million in staff hours to a rule that was struck down.  An honest commitment by the SEC to empower economists in the rule-making process will be a vital first step to ensure the mistakes of the proxy access rule are not replicated in future rules.

I also support the goal in H.R. 2308 to further elaborate on the economic analysis requirements.  I would suggest, in light of the importance and pervasiveness of the state-based system of corporate governance, that the bill include a provision requiring the SEC to consider the impact of new rules on the states when rule-making touches on issues of corporate governance.

The U.S. Supreme Court has noted that “No principle of corporation law and practice is more firmly established than a state’s authority to regulate domestic corporations.”

Delaware is one prominent example, serving as the state of incorporation for half of all publicly traded companies.  Its corporate code is so highly valued among shareholders that the mere fact of Delaware incorporation typically earns a publicly traded company a 2-8% increase in value.  Many other states also compete for incorporations, particularly New York, Massachusetts, California and Texas.

In order to fully appreciate this fundamental characteristic of our system, I would urge adding the following language to H.R. 2308:

“The Commission shall consider the impact of new rules on the traditional role of states in governing the internal affairs of business entities and whether it can achieve its stated objective without preempting state law.”

The SEC can comply by taking into account commentary from state governors and state secretaries of state during the open comment period.  It can minimize the preemptive effect of new rules by including references to state law where appropriate similar to one
already found in Section 14a-8.  It can also commit to a process for seeking guidance on state corporate law by creating a mandatory state court certification procedure similar to that used by the SEC in the AFSCME v. AIG case in 2008.

I thank you again for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to answering your questions.

In corporate law, cost-benefit analysis, economics, financial regulation, securities regulation, truth on the market
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Banning Executives

Josh Wright —  6 July 2011

From the WSJ:

The Department of Health and Human Services this month notified Howard Solomon of Forest Laboratories Inc. that it intends to exclude him from doing business with the federal government. This, in turn, could prevent Forest from selling its drugs to Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration. If the government implements its ban, Forest would have to dump Mr. Solomon, now 83 years old, in order to protect its corporate revenue. No drug company, large or small, can afford to lose out on sales to the federal government, a major customer.

….

The Health and Human Services department startled drug makers last year when the agency said it would start invoking a little-used administrative policy under the Social Security Act against pharmaceutical executives. This policy allows officials to bar corporate leaders from health-industry companies doing business with the government, if a drug company is guilty of criminal misconduct. The agency said a chief executive or other leader can be banned even if he or she had no knowledge of a company’s criminal actions. Retaining a banned executive can trigger a company’s exclusion from government business.

Debarment is obviously a very serious remedy.  The increased use of debarment in this context has been controversial, especially in cases in which the executive has not demonstrated that the debarred individual is actually complicit.  The WSJ story discusses the Forest Laboratories example along these lines in more detail:

According to Mr. Westling, “It would be a mistake to see this as solely a health-care industry issue. The use of sanctions such as exclusion and debarment to punish individuals where the government is unable to prove a direct legal or regulatory violation could have wide-ranging impact.” An exclusion penalty could be more costly than a Justice Department prosecution.

He said that the Defense Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, have debarment powers similar to the HHS exclusion authority.

The Forest case has its origins in an investigation into the company’s marketing of its big-selling antidepressants Celexa and Lexapro. Last September, Forest made a plea agreement with the government, under which it is paying $313 million in criminal and civil penalties over sales-related misconduct.

A federal court made the deal final in March. Forest Labs representatives said they were shocked when the intent-to-ban notice was received a few weeks later, because Mr. Solomon wasn’t accused by the government of misconduct.

Forest is sticking by its chief. “No one has ever alleged that Mr. Solomon did anything wrong, and excluding him [from the industry] is unjustified,” said general counsel Herschel Weinstein. “It would also set an extremely troubling precedent that would create uncertainty throughout the industry and discourage regulatory settlements.”

The issue of debarment also arises in the antitrust context as a weapon in the toolkit of antitrust enforcement agencies prosecuting cartels.  Judge Ginsburg and I have argued, in Antitrust Sanctions, that the debarment remedy in that context, along with a shift toward individual responsibility and away from ever-increasing corporate fines, would result in a shift toward efficient deterrence.   In our case, we discuss debarment for the executive actually engaged in the price-fixing as well as officers and directors who negligently supervise the price-fixers (e.g., with failure to institute an antitrust compliance program).   Without safeguards to ensure that debarment is imposed in cases of actual wrongdoing or negligent supervision, and also in the cases of settlement, that there is a factual basis for debarment, imposition of these penalties runs the risk that enforcement agencies will have arbitrary power to banish executives that are disfavored for whatever reason.  If its application is properly constrained, however, debarment can be a more effective tool in prosecuting antitrust offenses and potentially other white-collar crime than ever-increasing corporate fines which are largely borne by shareholders.  I’ll refer interested readers to the Ginsburg & Wright link above for the more detailed case in favor of adding debarment to the cartel-enforcement toolkit, including a discussion of its application in the antitrust context in a variety of other countries as well as non-antitrust settings in the U.S.

 

In antitrust, corporate crime, corporate law, economics
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In Defense of Delaware’s Business Judgment Rule

Thom Lambert —  13 June 2011

In a recent Dealbook post, Steven M. Davidoff complains that Delaware’s business judgment rule is too lenient.  Davidoff contends that “[a] Delaware court is not going to find [directors] liable no matter how stupid their decisions are. Instead, a Delaware court will find them liable only if they intentionally acted wrongfully or were so oblivious that it was essentially the same thing.”  He then asserts that a commonly heard justification for this lenient approach — that it is required in order to induce qualified individuals to serve as directors — is “laughable.”

Prof. Davidoff’s pithy summary of the Delaware business judgment rule seems accurate, and I share his skepticism toward the argument that the rule is justified as a means of inducing highly qualified directors to serve.  I disagree, though, with his insinuation that the Delaware approach is unjustified.  The rule makes a great deal of sense as a means of aligning the incentives of directors (and officers) with those of shareholders.

Under Delaware’s business judgment rule, courts will abstain from second-guessing the merits of a business decision — even one that appears, in retrospect, to have been substantively unreasonable — as long as the directors acted honestly, in good faith, without any conflict of interest, and on a reasonably informed basis (i.e., they weren’t “grossly negligent” in informing themselves prior to making the decision at issue).  Courts treat the rule as quasi-jurisdictional, insisting that they simply will not hear complaints about the substantive reasonableness of a decision as long as the prerequisites to BJR protection are satisfied. 

One frequently hears two justifications for this deferential approach.  First, courts sometimes seek to justify it on grounds that they are not business experts.  Second, as Prof. Davidoff observes, directors and officers often defend it on grounds that it’s needed to prevent qualified directors from being scared off by the prospect of huge liability for good faith business decisions that turn out poorly.  

Neither justification works very well.  Courts routinely second-guess the substance of decisions in areas where they lack expertise and might, by imposing liability, dissuade qualified individuals from offering their services.  Consider, for example, medical malpractice.  Courts aren’t medical experts, yet they routinely second-guess the substance of good faith, reasonably informed treatment decisions.  And they do this with full knowledge that malpractice judgments dissuade qualified doctors from providing their services.  (Remember President Bush’s concern that malpractice verdicts were dissuading gynecologists from “practic[ing] their love with women all across this country”?)  There must be something more to the story.

Indeed, there is.  By insulating directors from liability for good faith, informed business decisions that turn out poorly, the business judgment rule encourages directors to take greater business risks.  This is a good thing, because directors and officers tend to be more risk averse than their principals, the shareholders.  I previously explained that point in criticizing Mark Cuban’s claim that shareholders and CEOs “have completely different agendas: Most chief executives want to hit a ‘home run’ — taking big risks for potentially big payoffs — while most mom-and-pop shareholders simply hope not to ‘strike out’ and lose their nest egg.”  I wrote:

… Stockholders would normally prefer corporate managers to take more, not less, business risk.

When it comes to managerial decision-making, rational stockholders prefer greater risk-taking (which is associated with higher potential rewards) for a number of reasons. First, stockholders have limited liability, which means that if a business venture totally tanks and creates liabilities in excess of the corporation’s assets, the stockholders are off the hook for the excess. Since stockholders are able to externalize some of the downside of business risks, they’ll tend to be risk-preferring. Moreover, stockholders are the “residual claimants” of a corporation — they don’t get paid until obligations to all other corporate constituents (creditors, employees, preferred stockholders, etc.) have been satisfied. In other words, they get nothing if the corporation breaks even, and they therefore would prefer that managers pursue business ventures likely to do more than break even. Finally, stockholders are able to eliminate firm-specific, “unsystematic” risk from their investment portfolios by owning a diversified collection of stocks. They therefore do not care about such risk (although they do demand compensation for bearing non-diversifiable, “systematic” risk). …

Compared to equity investors, corporate managers (including CEOs) tend to be relatively risk-averse. Unlike shareholders, they get paid even if the corporation breaks even, so high-risk/high-reward ventures are less attractive to them. In addition, they cannot diversify their labor “investment” so as to eliminate firm-specific risk (one can generally work only one job, after all). Managers therefore tend to prefer “safer” business ventures.

The need to reconcile risk preferences among corporate managers (directors and officers) and their principals (the shareholders) provides a compelling justification for Delaware’s business judgment rule.  Chancellor Allen clearly articulated this point in footnote 18 of the 1996 Caremark opinion:

Where review of board functioning is involved, courts leave behind as a relevant point of reference the decisions of the hypothetical “reasonable person”, who typically supplies the test for negligence liability. It is doubtful that we want business men and women to be encouraged to make decisions as hypothetical persons of ordinary judgment and prudence might. The corporate form gets its utility in large part from its ability to allow diversified investors to accept greater investment risk. If those in charge of the corporation are to be adjudged personally liable for losses on the basis of a substantive judgment based upon what persons of ordinary or average judgment and average risk assessment talent regard as “prudent” “sensible” or even “rational”, such persons will have a strong incentive at the margin to authorize less risky investment projects.

As Geoff has often reminded us, the optimal level of business risk is not zero.

In business, corporate governance, corporate law, law and economics
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Lynn Stout on “criminogenic” hedge funds and insider trading

Geoffrey Manne —  17 December 2010

Lynn Stout, writing in the Harvard Business Review’s blog, claims that hedge funds are uniquely “criminogenic” environments.  (Not surprisingly, Frank Pasquale seems reflexively to approve):

My research, shows that people’s circumstances affect whether they are likely to act prosocially. And some hedge funds provided the circumstances for encouraging an antisocial behavior like not obeying the laws against insider trading, according to these investigations.

* * *

Recognizing that some hedge funds present social environments that encourage unethical behavior allows us to identify new and better ways to address the perennial problem of insider trading. For example, because traders listen to instructions from their managers and investors, insider trading would be less of a problem if those managers and investors could be given greater incentive to urge their own traders to comply with the law, perhaps by holding the managers and investors — not just the individual traders — accountable for insider trading. Similarly, because traders mimic the behavior of other traders, devoting the enforcement resources necessary to discover and remove any “bad apples” before they spoil the rest of the barrel is essential; if the current round of investigations leads to convictions, it is likely to have a substantial impact on trader behavior, at least for a while. Finally, insider trading will be easier to deter if we combat the common but mistaken perception that it is a “victimless” crime.

Rather than re-post the whole article, I’ll direct you there to see why she thinks hedge funds are so uniquely anti-social.  Then I urge you to ask yourself whether she has actually demonstrated anything of the sort.  Really what she demonstrates, if anything, is that agency costs exist.  Oh, and people learn from their peers.  Remarkable!  And this is different than . . . the rest of the world, how?  There are Jewish people in the world, a lot of them work on Wall Street, and many of them attend synagogue.  No doubt Jews mimic the behavior of other Jews.  Bernie Madoff was Jewish.  The SEC should be raiding temples all across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut!

The point is that she has no point, and directing her pointless observations toward hedge funds in particular is just silly (and/or politically expedient).  There are bad apples everywhere.  There are agency costs everywhere.  A police state could probably reduce the consequences of these problems (but don’t forget corruption (i.e., bad apples) in the government!).  The question is whether it’s worth it, and that requires a far more subtle analysis than Stout provides here.

And all of this is because insider trading really needs to be eradicated, according to Stout:

Of course, insider trading isn’t really victimless: for every trader who reaps a gain using insider information, some investor on the other side of the trade must lose. But because the losing investor is distant and anonymous, it’s easy to mistakenly feel that insider trading isn’t really doing harm.

Actually, the reason most people feel that insider trading isn’t really doing harm is because it isn’t.

I’ll leave the synopsis of the argument to Steve Bainbridge.  On the adverse selection argument, see Stanislav Dolgopolov.  Sure, there is debate.  Empirics are hard to come by.  But the weight of the evidence and theory, especially accounting for enforcement costs (one study even seems to suggest that making insider trading illegal actually induces more insider trading to occur (and impedes M&A activity)), is decidedly against Stout’s naked assertion.  The follow on claim that, in essence, agency costs justify stepped up dawn raids at hedge funds is even more baseless.

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In 10b-5, business, corporate crime, corporate governance, corporate law, disclosure regulation, financial regulation, hedge funds, insider trading, mergers & acquisitions, securities regulation , , , , , , , , , ,
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