Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) was intended to improve public company internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR). Faulty internal controls were believed to have contributed to many corporate scandals during the dot-com era. Empirical research of the pre-SOX era...

In a 2014 opinion (<em>ATP Tour, Inc. v. Deutscher Tennis Bund</em>), the Delaware Supreme Court upheld a fee-shifting bylaw, which required unsuccessful shareholder litigants in either derivative or direct actions to reimburse the corporation for its legal expenses. Although the entity in question was a...

Although the prohibition on taking of organizational opportunities is well established, the standards applied to this problem in corporate law disputes are vague and imprecise. Corporate directors and officers lack clear guidance as to when a business venture may be taken for themselves or must...

On its surface, Jesus' Parable of the Talents is a simple story with four key plot elements: (1) A master is leaving on a long trip and entrusts substantial assets to three servants to manage during his absence. (2) Two of the servants invested the assets profitably, earning substantial returns,...

Who decides what products a company should sell, what prices it should charge, and so on? Is it the board of directors, the top management team, or the shareholders? In large corporations, of course, the answer is the top management team operating under the supervision of the board. As for the...

This is a draft chapter for a forthcoming research handbook on shareholder power and activism. This chapter provides an analysis of shareholder activism based on the so-called director primacy model of corporate governance, which argues for a board-centric, rather than a shareholder-centric,...

The Insider Trading Prohibition Act of 2021 has been passed by the House of Representatives and, as of this writing, is awaiting action in the Senate. The Act’s proponents claim that it simply codifies and clarifies existing law. In fact, the Act does neither. It likely will expand the scope...

A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that Senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market...

Since its inception, corporate law has separated ownership and control. Shareholders nominally own the corporation, but they are entitled to exercise almost nonce of the control rights normally associated with ownership or property. Instead, control of the corporation is vested by statute in the...

This essay will serve as the introduction to a collection of 23 newly commissioned articles on numerous aspects of insider trading law. The contributors cover a wide variety of topics, ranging from analyses of current issues in USA insider trading law, empirical analyses of insider trading both...