Corporate governance - Vigil

Since 2004, the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance (CCGG) has prepared best practices documents for reporting issuers. These documents, including this “2017 Best Practices for Proxy Circular Disclosure” publication, provide examples of excellent disclosure by Canadian issuers in the area of corporate governance and executive compensation.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Jay Clayton has emphasized that corporate governance rulemaking under his leadership will be designed to maximize the long-term interests of the retail shareholder

As 2017 draws to a conclusion and we reflect on the evolution of corporate governance since the turn of the millennium, a recurring question percolating in boardrooms and among shareholders and other stakeholders, academics and politicians is:  what’s next on the horizon for corporat

More than seven years after the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act, the CEO pay ratio rule is finally set to require approximately 3,500 U.S. companies to disclose their 2017 ratios of their CEOs’ pay to that of their median employees in their 2018 proxy statements.

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) typically use blockchain technology to offer tokens that confer some rights in return, most often, for cryptocurrency. They can be seen as effectively a conjunction of crowdfunding and blockchain.

ISS released its updated proxy voting policies effective for annual meetings held on or after February 1, 2018, which are available here. We previewed ISS’s proposed voting policy changes in our Alert available here

Much research on voluntary disclosure focuses on decisions stemming from persistent factors. For example, the economic forces that give rise to a firm’s level of proprietary costs are persistent, and how the voluntary disclosure decision is affected by proprietary costs is persistent. Institutional investor ownership (IO) is another relatively stable determinant of disclosure. Prior research indicates that increases in disclosure associated with increases in IO can decrease information asymmetry and improve liquidity. In this paper, we hold IO constant, and examine how short-term changes in IO attention affect the firm’s short-term disclosure choices, and the resulting information asymmetry and liquidity consequences.

Welcome everyone to the 36th annual Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation. We have made it a priority to reach out to investors and small businesses across the country—including in Texas—and I am delighted that this year’s Forum is being held in Austin. The Texas capital is known for its lively music scene, but the crowd is gathered here today because Austin is known as the “rock star” of small business cities. [1] Austin has received a number of accolades in recent months, including being named the number one place in America to start a business, the top city for “small business vitality,” and the top city for launching a technology startup. [2]

Changing business models, cybersecurity, and competition for talent are just a few of the things expected to concern corporate directors in the next year.

This paper is motivated by two considerations. First, prior research argues that as a firm grows older, it should use more debt as it has more assets-in-place and fewer growth options. Second, prior research argues that as firms age after going public, their governance should adapt to their changing needs. Thus, our paper combines both considerations to examine how the age of a firm since going public affects how its governance influences its capital structure choices.

Most commercial and corporate contracts provide that the agreement is binding on a party’s “successor and assigns”. This boilerplate clause, coupled with the legal consequences of a stock purchase or merger, covers most corporate transaction scenarios and ensures that the agreement remains with, and binding on, the business that signed the contract.

Anyone who has been in the workforce has likely either experienced or known someone who has felt the effects of employee favoritism. Whether it is getting passed over for a promotion because your competition was the CEO’s college buddy or being spared from downsizing because your supervisor knew that you, unlike your co-workers, had mouths to feed at home.

Innovation is vital to the development of core competitive advantages of a firm and to the economic growth of a country (Solow, 1957). By nature, innovation is a risky, costly, and long-term process fraught with failures (Holmstrom, 1989).