In the 1920s and 1930s, many public utilities in the United States were controlled by holding companies organized in pyramid form. This structure can add value to subsidiaries but can also facilitate extraction of wealth from the subsidiaries’ public shareholders. I examine the effects of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA), which outlawed pyramid structures. The value of both top holding companies and their subsidiaries fall (rise) around the time of key legislative events suggesting a higher (lower) likelihood that PUHCA would be enacted, supporting the hypothesis that public shareholders benefited from the presence of a controlling shareholder.
Academic and market interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing has grown markedly in recent years. Although less prominent, a...
In this chapter, we put forth a case study of Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. We detail the legal and contractual issues that arose as the parties...
The recently-announced $50 billion loan package from the G7 nations to Ukraine fell short of the $300 billion or so hoped for by the designers of its...
Critics of initiatives to diversify corporate boards frequently rely on efficiency arguments. Diversity opponents marshal four principal claims. First...
The number of law firm partners who identify as women has more than doubled since 1993. Will these gender parity advances regress as employers curb...
As our nation emerges from the shadow of COVID-19, the general public is coming to grips with a stark reality looming over our public schools...
In Cantero v. Bank of America, the US Supreme Court declined to decide whether Bank of America Corp. must pay interest on New York mortgage borrowers’...
Twenty-first-century politics has inspired a new mode of interstate rivalries and reprisals consisting not of the tariffs that plagued the Founding...
Anyone who studies trade secret law in depth knows that the field is complex and nuanced. That complexity can be intimidating to novices. Accordingly...
Anyone who studies patent law in depth knows that the field is complex and nuanced. That complexity can be intimidating to novices. Accordingly, the...
There have been many many, many proposals to use Russia’s frozen assets to help Ukraine. Russia’s invasion violated international law; reparations are...
After several years of dramatic growth, ESG investing seems to have entered a period of retrenchment. While it is impossible to predict the future...
To succeed in their trade, thieves need a place to stash their ill-gotten gains. Should the United States become a safe haven for international...
Lenders are perfectly free to decide for themselves whether, when, how, to whom and on what terms they will extend credit to a sovereign borrower. But...
Although ethical critiques of markets are longstanding, modern academic debates about the “moral limits of markets” (MLM) tend to be fairly limited in...
Consequential damages have been a cornerstone of contract doctrine since the broken crankshaft in Hadley v. Baxendale. And the Hadley rule is one of...
Contract terms that improve or reduce the likelihood of repayment of a debt should impact its price. That’s basic economics. But what about a contract...