Securities Law
The Best of Both Worlds: A Fact-Based Analysis of the Legal Obligations of Investment Advisers and Broker-Dealers and a Framework for Enhanced Investor Protection
James S. Wrona, 68(1): 1 - 56 (November 2012)
A crucial debate on financial regulatory reform, affecting virtually every investor in the United States, is now taking place. The debate centers on the standards of care required of financial professionals when they provide investment advice. Two separate and markedly different regulatory regimes apply to these financial professionals: one for investment advisers and one for broker-dealers. This article discusses recent congressional initiatives related to advisers and broker-dealers, reviews existing obligations when advisers and broker-dealers provide advice to customers, and identifies regulatory gaps that need to be bridged. The level of regulatory oversight that both models receive also is explored. Finally, the article offers a framework to ensure robust investor protection and, as part of that framework, recommends that policymakers impose additional obligations on both broker-dealers and advisers to achieve truly universal standards of conduct that are in investors' best interests.
SEC Administrative Proceedings: Backlash and Reform
Alexander I. Platt, 71(1): 1-52 (Winter 2015/2016)
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s aggressive prosecution of securities violations inside administrative proceedings (APs) has generated backlash. Key stakeholders are now attacking the agency’s enforcement program as illegitimate and a growing number of respondents charged in APs have launched broad constitutional challenges. Though these suits target deeply entrenched features of administrative adjudication, they have already begun to prove successful, and threaten significant transformations to the SEC and beyond.
Historically, the SEC’s enforcement architecture embodied respect for the principle that, holding all else equal, procedures ought to be commensurate with the stakes of the adjudication. After Dodd-Frank, the agency abandoned this principle. The backlash is, at least in part, attributable to and justified by this reversal.
The SEC should have done after Dodd-Frank what it had done after previous expansions of its administrative penalty powers: reestablish the equilibrium between penalties and procedures by revising its rules of practice that govern APs. The SEC’s recently proposed amendments to these rules are too little, too late. A bolder approach is required.
No Registration Opinions (2015 Update)
Report of the Subcommittee on Securities Law Opinions, Federal Regulation of Securities committee, ABA Business Law Section; 71(1): 129-138 (Winter 2015/2016)
Cross-border Tender Offers and Other Business Combination Transactions and the U.S. Federal Securities Laws: An Overview
John M. Basnage and William J. Curtin III; 71(2): 459-538 (Spring 2016)
In structuring cross-border tender offers and other business combination transactions, parties must consider carefully the potential application of U.S. federal securities laws and regulations to their transaction. By understanding the extent to which a proposed transaction will be subject to the provisions of U.S. federal securities laws and regulations, parties may be able to structure their transaction in a manner that avoids the imposition of unanticipated or burdensome disclosure and procedural requirements and also may be able to minimize potential conflicts between U.S. laws and regulations and foreign legal or market requirements. This article provides a broad overview of U.S. federal securities laws and regulations applicable to cross-border tender offers and other business combination transactions, including a detailed discussion of Regulations 14D and 14E under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the principal accommodations afforded to foreign private issuers in these regulations.
The Post Dodd-Frank Act Evolution of the Private Fund Industry: Comparative Evidence from 2012 and 2015
Wulf A. Kaal, 71(4): 1151-1206 (Fall 2016)
This comparative survey study examines the private fund industry’s reactions and adjustments to a rapidly evolving regulatory framework, three years after the first application of mandatory registration and disclosure rules for private fund advisers under the Dodd-Frank Act. Using two datasets (2012: N = 94; 2015: N = 69) for a population of 1267 registered investment advisers to add an historical time series perspective, the author analyzes and compares survey respondents’ short- and long-term estimations of industry effects. The data suggest that immediate and short-term concerns have given way to adaptation to the changes.
The Promise of Unfavorable Research: Ramifications of Regulations Separating Research and Investment Banking for IPO Issuers and Investors
Benjamin J. Catalano; 72(1): 31-60 (Winter 2016/2017)
The trend in Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority rulemaking and enforcement to insulate research from investment banking influence has led to the removal of research analysts from the underwriting process with adverse consequences for new issuers and their investors. The approach conflicts with the congressional objective under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act to incorporate research fully in public offerings for emerging growth companies, which now comprise the vast majority of IPO issuers. Faced with these competing objectives, broker-dealers should have written policies and procedures that are carefully crafted to service their underwriting and investor clients appropriately and to take advantage of the JOBS Act privileges with respect to research.
SEC Cybersecurity Guidelines: Insights into the Utility Risk Factor Disclosures for Investors
Edward A. Morse, Vasant Raval, and John R. Wingender, Jr., 73(1): 1-34 (Winter 2017/2018)
In October 2011, the SEC issued new guidelines for disclosure of cybersecurity risks. Some firms responded to these guidelines by issuing new risk factor disclosures. This article examines the guidelines and cybersecurity disclosures in the context of existing laws governing securities regulation. It then examines empirical results from firm disclosures following the new guidelines. Evidence shows a relatively small proportion of firms chose to modify their risk factor disclosures, with most firms choosing not to disclose any specific cybersecurity risk. Moreover, disclosing firms generally experienced significant negative stock market price effects on account of making new disclosures. Rather than viewing disclosure as a positive signal of management attentiveness, investors apparently viewed it as a cautionary sign.
Public Company Virtual-Only Annual Meetings
Lisa A. Fontenot, 73(1): 35-52 (Winter 2017/2018)
Public companies traditionally hold annual shareholder meetings using a formal in-person format. Some companies have more recently supplemented the meeting with audio or video streaming and are now adding an electronic component to a physical meeting to allow for remote participation, commonly referred to as a “hybrid meeting.” A relatively small but fast-growing number of companies are holding their annual shareholder meetings on an electronic-only basis with no physical meeting, known as a “virtual-only meeting.” This article discusses the legal landscape for virtual-only meetings, briefly reviews the history of the practice, and explores the controversy they present with certain institutional investors and activists. Its objective is to provide an initial roadmap of legal and practical considerations for companies considering virtualonly shareholders meetings.
Securities on Blockchain and the Uniform Commercial Code
Reade Ryan and Mayme Donohue; 73(1): 85-108 (Winter 2017/2018)
This article initially provides a high-level description of blockchain technology intended to be accessible to those without a technical background, and illustratively describes an existing blockchain system that already evidences securities issued and being traded. The article then sets forth and analyzes how Article 8 of the Uniform Commercial Code covers blockchain securities as “uncertificated securities.” Finally, the article provides guidance to corporate lawyers faced with giving a legal opinion relating to the issuance and sale of securities on a blockchain.
Dilution, Disclosure, Equity Compensation, and Buybacks
Bruce Dravis, 74(3) 631-658 (Summer 2019)
Equity compensation and company share buybacks are complementary: Equity compensation share issuances increase outstanding shares; buybacks decrease outstanding shares. Yet the two types of transactions require very different approval processes and securities and financial disclosures, and generate different financial and tax results, all of which are described in this article, and illustrated by data collected from fifty-nine of America’s largest public companies. This article encourages critics of buybacks to consider the complexity and interrelationship of buybacks and equity compensation.
The Myth of Morrison: Securities Fraud Litigation Against Foreign Issuers
Robert Bartlett, Matthew D. Cain, Jill E. Fisch, and Steven Davidoff Solomon; 74(4) 967-1014 (Fall 2019)
Using a sample of 388 securities fraud lawsuits filed between 2002 and 2017 against foreign issuers, we examine the effect of the Supreme Court’s decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd. We find that the description of Morrison as a steamroller, substantially ending litigation against foreign issuers, is a myth. Instead, we find that Morrison did not significantly change the type of litigation brought against foreign issuers, which, both before and after this case, focused on foreign issuers with a U.S. listing and substantial U.S. trading volume. Although dismissal rates rose post- Morrison, we find no evidence that this was related to the decision. Settlement amounts and attorneys’ fees remained unchanged post-Morrison. We use these findings to theorize that Morrison was primarily a preemptive decision about standing that firmly delineated the exposure of foreign issuers to U.S. liability in response to the Vivendi case, which sought to expand the scope of liability for foreign issuers whose shares traded primarily in non-U.S. venues. When Morrison is placed in its true context, it is justified as a decision in line with administrative and court actions that have historically aligned firms’ U.S. liability to be proportional to their U.S. presence. Although Morrison had this defining effect, it did not change the litigation environment for foreign issuers, which was the oft-cited import of the decision. More generally, our analysis of Morrison also underscores how the decision has been mistakenly characterized as a case primarily about extraterritoriality rather than standing.
The Limits of Delaware Corporate Law: Internal Affairs, Federal Forum Provisions, and Sciabacucchi
Joseph A. Grundfest; 75(1): 1319-1398 (Winter 2019-2020)
The Securities Act of 1933 (“Securities Act”) provides for concurrent federal and state jurisdiction. Securities Act claims were historically litigated in federal court, but in 2015 plaintiffs began filing far more frequently in state court, where dismissals are less common and where weaker claims are more likely to survive. Directors’ and officers’ insurance costs for initial public offerings (“IPOs”) have since significantly increased. Today, approximately 75 percent of section 11 corporate defendants face state court proceedings. Federal forum provisions (“FFPs”) respond to the migration of Securities Act claims to state court and to increased insurance costs by requiring that Securities Act claims be litigated in their traditional federal forum.
Uncovering the Hidden Conflicts in Securities Class Action Litigation: Lessons from the State Street Case
Benjamin P. Edwards and Anthony Rickey; 75(1): 1551-1570 (Winter 2019-2020)
Courts, Congress, and commentators have long worried that stockholder plaintiffs in securities and M&A litigation, and their counsel, may pursue suits that benefit themselves, rather than absent stockholders or the corporations in which they invest. Following congressional reforms that encouraged the appointment of institutional stockholders as lead plaintiffs in securities actions, significant academic commentary has focused on the problem of “pay to play”—the possibility that class action law firms encourage litigation by making donations to politicians with influence over institutional stockholders, and particularly public sector pension funds.
State Section 11 Litigation in the Post-Cyan Environment (Despite Sciabacucchi) Michael Klausner, Jason Hegland, Carin LeVine, and Jessica Shin; 75(2): 1769-1790 (Spring 2020)
In Cyan, Inc. v. Beaver County Employees Retirement Fund, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 (“SLUSA”) preserved state courts’ jurisdiction to adjudicate cases brought under the Securities Act of 1933, with defendants having no right to remove a case to federal court. The result of this decision has been a dramatic increase in section 11 cases litigated in state court, often with a parallel case brought in federal court against the same defendants based on the same alleged misstatements.
Loss Causation and the Materialization of Risk Doctrine in Securities Fraud Class Actions
Richard A. Booth; 75(2): 1791-1814 (Spring 2020)
In the context of a claim for securities fraud under SEC Rule 10b-5, most federal circuit courts have ruled or recognized that loss causation can be proven by an event that demonstrates an earlier statement by a defendant company to be false. In other words, corrective disclosure need not take the form of speech. Rather, a statement can be shown to be false by the materialization of a risk that was concealed by the company, and investors can be compensated for any losses they suffer as a result. Although this doctrine is well established, its ultimate effect is to overcompensate investors, thus encouraging excessive securities litigation and chilling voluntary disclosure.