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From the category archives:

Stefan Padfield

Is Greed Good?

November 5, 2009

We watch the movie "Wall Street" as part of my M&A class.   Recently, we came to the scene where Gordon Gekko proclaims that greed is good:
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.  Greed is right, greed works.  Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence [...]

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How Harvard Caused the Financial Crisis

October 29, 2009

Interesting article over at MSN Money.  Here's a taste:
Just where did Wall Street go wrong? It's popular to blame misaligned incentives, lack of regulation or just plain greed. . . . The truth is, sadly, more complex, but it boils down to this: Harvard Business School is to blame. Harvard Business School [...]

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Is It Really That Hard to Distinguish Legitimate Research From Insider Trading?

October 22, 2009

Some commentators are fretting that the recent blockbuster insider trading case involving Galleon Management (nice summary here) is going to chill market-enhancing research.  For example, Prof. Bainbridge argues that:
There is a very serious risk that this case could chill aggressive but legitimate research by hedge funds and other professional investors.  If so, the SEC will [...]

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"Spin Versus Fraud" and Other Spin

October 15, 2009

Imagine you are invested in a hedge fund around the time the credit crisis was beginning to rear its head.  You get on a call with one of the hedge fund managers and are told that he is "very comfortable with exactly where we are" and "there's no basis for thinking this is one big [...]

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Emailing About Whether We’ve Learned Anything From the Financial Crisis

October 8, 2009

An email exchange played out on my desktop that I thought readers might find interesting.  It started with Kristina Melomed (a former student of mine and a JD and MTax Candidate here at the University of Akron) passing on the following:
"Please find attached a chart showing the top 5 banks holding the largest percentage of [...]

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The Constitutional Rights of Corporations and the Federalization of Corporate Law

October 1, 2009

Here are links to two blog posts you may find interesting:  The Volokh Conspiracy on Constitutional Rights and Corporations, and The Race to the Bottom on the Federal Takeover of Delaware Corporate Law.  Enjoy!

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Selling out Shareholders and the Truth: The SEC’s Settlement “Facade”

September 24, 2009

On January 1, 2009, Bank of America closed its deal to acquire Merrill Lynch in what can fairly be called one of the “distressed” deals of the financial crisis.  Prior to closing the deal, the bank had gotten required shareholder approval for the transaction—but without fully disclosing, as Fortune notes, “that Bank of America had [...]

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Is There a Constitutional Right for Corporations to Influence Elections?

September 17, 2009

The New York Times described the case of Citizens United v. FEC, which was recently re-argued before the Supreme Court, as "a momentous case that could transform the way political campaigns are conducted."  As the NYT reports:
The case involves “Hillary: The Movie,” a mix of advocacy journalism and political commentary that is a relentlessly negative [...]

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Profiting on Death and Other Random Points

September 10, 2009

Here are a few bits of news you might find interesting:
1.  The race is on to write the script, can you guess how this movie ends (hat tip to Kristina Melomed)?
After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may [...]

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I hate to say I told you so, but….

September 3, 2009

This is what I wrote a while back in my paper "Finding State Action When Corporations Govern" (last revised April 15, 2009):
This Article argues that corporations have for some time been increasingly taking on roles as pseudo-governmental actors without incurring the accountability to the people generally associated with state action.  This is happening via “new [...]

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Who Owns Corporations and Should They Pay For Access?

August 27, 2009

Question 1:  Who are the owners of the typical U.S. publicly traded corporation?
(a)  The shareholders.
(b)  The board of directors.
(c)  The management (CEO, CFO, etc.).
Question 2:  If the owners of the corporation want to put a slate of nominees for the board of directors on the corporation's annual proxy statement, who should bear the cost?
(a)  The [...]

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Just because you're paranoid . . . .

August 20, 2009

Fun weekly "coincidence":
First, Frank Rich (HT: Kristina Melomed) opines that:
What the Great Recession has crystallized is a larger syndrome that Obama tapped into during the campaign.  It’s the sinking sensation that the American game is rigged — that, as the president typically put it a month after his inauguration, the system is in hock to [...]

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