When Managers Bypass Shareholder Approval of Board Appointments: Evidence from the Private Security Market

This paper investigates the influence of managerial entrenchment on private placements by examining the firm\u27s decision to appoint representatives of the private investors to the board without shareholder approval. By analyzing a sample of U.S. firms that appoint directors in combination with private offerings between 1995 and 2000, we find that firms with greater managerial entrenchment are more likely to bypass shareholder approval. Firms that bypass shareholders are less likely to appoint independent directors or to elect one of these directors as chairman. We also show that the market reacts more positively to the private offering announcement when the firm submits its board candidates for shareholder approval. Further, firms that bypass approval underperform compared to firms that obtain it. Overall our findings suggest that managers avoid shareholder approval to perpetuate entrenchment

A Survey of Litigation in Corporate Finance

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review research on litigation in corporate finance. Design/methodology/approach This paper surveys studies on the estimation of litigation risk, litigation costs, stock reaction to lawsuit announcement, and the effect of litigation on corporate financial policies and outcomes. Findings The first section presents a survey of studies that estimate litigation risk. The authors then discuss a set of studies that focus on the various costs associated with litigation. The third area of review is about studies which estimate the market reaction to a lawsuit announcement. The next section surveys studies that examine the relation between litigation and a variety of corporate policies, behaviors, and outcomes. The authors then discuss the emerging literature on how corporate political connections can influence the outcome of litigation. The survey concludes with a brief summary and a discussion of suggestions for future research involving corporate litigation. Originality/value By providing an extensive review of the literature on litigation in corporate finance, this survey can help researchers to identify recent trends in litigation research and select promising new avenues of investigation in the field

Catalyzing Collaboration: The Developing Infrastructure for Federal Public Private Partnerships

There is growing interest on the part of government, philanthropy and business to work together to achieve greater impact. Partnerships that span the sectors have the potential to achieve more than any sector can achieve on its own by leveraging the strengths of each. However, such partnerships also give rise to added costs and entail greater risks. To address these challenges, offices of strategic partnerships are emerging at the federal level to provide an infrastructure to catalyze cross-sectoral partnerships. This report examines 21 such offices in federal departments and agencies whose purpose is to facilitate and accelerate partnerships with philanthropy and business -- ranging from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education, to the Department of State and the Agency for International Development, to the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The formation of these offices has been driven by champions within government -- many with prior experience in philanthropy or business -- that have witnessed the power of working collaboratively with other sectors. Their actions have often been reinforced by executive orders and other directives conducive to their growth. In the case of those offices that have been created in the last few years, they have also been encouraged by the examples of their more established counterparts

Mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints: automatic reformulation and solution via constrained optimization

Constrained optimization has been extensively used to solve many large scale deterministic problems arising in economics, including, for example, square systems of equations and nonlinear programs. A separate set of models have been generated more recently, using complementarity to model various phenomenon, particularly in general equilibria. The unifying framework of mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints (MPEC) has been postulated for problems that combine facets of optimization and complementarity. This paper briefly reviews some methods available to solve these problems and described a new suite of tools for working with MPEC models. Computational results demonstrating the potential of this tool are given that automatically construct and solve a variety of different nonlinear programming reformulations of MPEC problems.\ud \ud This material is based on research partially supported by the National Science Foundation Grant CCR-9972372, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Grant F49620-01-1-0040, Microsoft Corporation and the Guggenheim Foundation

Research and development study related to the synthesis of formaldehyde from CO2 and H2 Quarterly progress report, Aug. - Oct. 1966

Formaldehyde synthesis procedures under space conditions, with bibliograph

Research and development study related to synthesis of formaldehyde from CO2 and H2 Quarterly progress report, Nov. 1966 - Jan. 1967

Solid catalyst selection for formaldehyde synthesis by methane oxidatio

Research and development study related to the synthesis of formaldehyde from CO2 and H2 Quarterly progress report, May - Jul. 1967

Synthesis of formaldehyde by oxidation of methan

Research and Development Study Related to the Synthesis of Formaldehyde from CO2 and H2 Quarterly Progress Report, Feb. - Apr. 1967

Oxidation of methane to formaldehyde in reactors coated with potassium tetraborat