2,132 research outputs found
Hedge Funds in Corporate Governance and Corporate Control.
Hedge funds have become critical players in both corporate governance and corporate control. In this article, we document and examine the nature of hedge fund activism, how and why it differs from activism by traditional institutional investors, and
its implications for corporate governance and regulatory reform. We argue that hedge fund activism differs from activism by traditional institutions in several ways: it is directed at significant changes in individual companies (rather than small, systemic changes), it entails higher costs, and it is strategic and ex ante (rather than
intermittent and ex post). The reasons for these differences may lie in the incentive structures of hedge fund managers as well as in the fact that traditional institutions face regulatory barriers, political constraints, or conflicts of interest that make activism less profitable than it is for hedge funds. But the differences may also be due to the fact that traditional institutions pursue a diversification strategy that is difficult to combine with strategic
activism.
Although hedge funds hold great promise as active shareholders, their intense involvement in corporate governance and control also potentially raises two kinds of
problems: The interests of hedge funds sometimes diverge from those of their fellow
shareholders; and the intensity of hedge fund activism imposes substantial stress that the
regulatory system may not be able to withstand. The resulting problems, however, are relatively isolated and narrow, do not broadly undermine the value of hedge fund
activism as a whole, and do not warrant major additional regulatory interventions.
The sharpest accusation leveled against activist funds is that activism is designed
to achieve a short-term payoff at the expense of long-term profitability. Although we
consider this a potentially serious problem that arguably pervades hedge fund activism,
we conclude that a sufficient case for legal intervention has not been made. This
conclusion results from the uncertainties about whether short-termism is in fact a real
problem and how much hedge fund activism is driven by excessive short-termism. But,
most importantly, it stems from our view that market forces and adaptive devices taken by companies individually are better designed than regulation to deal with the potential
negative effects of hedge fund short-termism while preserving the positive effects of
hedge-fund activism
Parallel Algorithm for Solving Kepler's Equation on Graphics Processing Units: Application to Analysis of Doppler Exoplanet Searches
[Abridged] We present the results of a highly parallel Kepler equation solver
using the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) on a commercial nVidia GeForce 280GTX
and the "Compute Unified Device Architecture" programming environment. We apply
this to evaluate a goodness-of-fit statistic (e.g., chi^2) for Doppler
observations of stars potentially harboring multiple planetary companions
(assuming negligible planet-planet interactions). We tested multiple
implementations using single precision, double precision, pairs of single
precision, and mixed precision arithmetic. We find that the vast majority of
computations can be performed using single precision arithmetic, with selective
use of compensated summation for increased precision. However, standard single
precision is not adequate for calculating the mean anomaly from the time of
observation and orbital period when evaluating the goodness-of-fit for real
planetary systems and observational data sets. Using all double precision, our
GPU code outperforms a similar code using a modern CPU by a factor of over 60.
Using mixed-precision, our GPU code provides a speed-up factor of over 600,
when evaluating N_sys > 1024 models planetary systems each containing N_pl = 4
planets and assuming N_obs = 256 observations of each system. We conclude that
modern GPUs also offer a powerful tool for repeatedly evaluating Kepler's
equation and a goodness-of-fit statistic for orbital models when presented with
a large parameter space.Comment: 19 pages, to appear in New Astronom
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pill: Adaptive Responses to Takeover Law
This Article explores the relationship between takeovers, legal doctrines, and private ordering. The authors first argue that the sanctioning of the poison pill and the just say no defense by Delaware courts was far less consequential than feared by its critics and hoped for by its proponents. Rather, market participants adapted to these legal developments by embracing two adaptive devices--greater board independence and increased incentive compensation--which had the effect of transforming the pill, a potentially pernicious governance tool, into a device that is plausibly in shareholders\u27 interest. Interestingly, however (and for critics of the pill, disconcertingly), market participants neither tried to change the law nor opt out of it. The authors place these developments in a broader perspective. They draw a distinction between bilateral devices--which enjoy support from both stockholders and managers--and unilateral devices, and argue that bilateral devices are more likely to be welfare-enhancing, are more stable, are privileged by Delaware law, and tend to further Delaware\u27s status as leading domicile for public corporations. Greater board independence and increased incentive compensation are examples of such bilateral devices. The authors conclude by examining why Delaware courts embraced the poison pill (at the time, a largely unilateral device, albeit one with bilateral features) and how they should deal with the use of pills by companies with staggered boards
Embattled CEOs
In this paper, we argue that chief executive officers of publicly-held corporations in the United States are losing power to their boards of directors and to their shareholders. This loss of power is recent (say, since 2000) and gradual, but nevertheless represents a significant move away from the imperial CEO who was surrounded by a hand-picked board and lethargic shareholders. After discussing the concept of power and its dimensions, we document the causes and symptoms of the decline in CEO power in several areas: share ownership composition and shareholder activism; governance rules and the board response to shareholder activism; regulatory changes related to shareholder voting; changes in the board of directors; and executive compensation. We argue that this decline in CEO power represent a long-term trend, rather than a temporary response to economic and political conditions. The decline in CEO power has several important implications, including implications with respect to the possibility of a regulatory backlash against certain newly empowered shareholder groups, the type of persons who will serve on corporate boards in the future, the type of shareholder initiatives that will be introduced and the corporate response to them, the convergence of corporate laws across countries, and the source of resistance to acquisitions and the legal regulation of target defenses
The Hanging Chads of Corporate Voting
Never has voting been more important in corporate law. With greater activism among shareholders and the shift from plurality to majority voting for directors, the number of close votes is rising. But is the basic technology of corporate voting adequate to the task? In this Article, we first examine the incredibly complicated system of US corporate voting, a complexity that is driven by the underlying custodial ownership structure, by dispersed ownership and large trading volumes, and by the rise in short-selling and derivatives. We identify three ways in which things predictably go wrong: pathologies of complexity; pathologies of ownership; and pathologies of misalignment of interests. We then discuss the current legal treatment of these pathologies and consider a variety of directions for reform, ranging from incremental modifications to fundamental redesign. We show that, absent a fundamental reconstruction of the ownership structure, the existing system will continue to be noisy, imprecise and disturbingly opaque. The problems with the existing system pose fundamental challenges for both proponents of direct shareholder democracy, who advocate more extensive voting rights for shareholders, and for proponents of indirect shareholder democracy, who advocate deference to a board of directors the legitimacy of which ultimately also rests on shareholder elections
How to Prevent Hard Cases from Making Bad Law: Bear Stearns, Delaware and the Strategic Use of Comity
The Bear Stearns/JP Morgan Chase merger placed Delaware between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the deal’s unprecedented deal protection measures – especially the 39.5% share exchange agreement – were probably invalid under current Delaware doctrine because they rendered the Bear Stearns shareholders’ approval rights entirely illusory. On the other hand, if a Delaware court were to enjoin a deal pushed by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury and arguably necessary to prevent a collapse of the international financial system, it would invite just the sort of federal intervention that would undermine Delaware’s role as the de facto provider of U.S. corporate law. Faced with a choice between undermining the delicate and subtle balance struck between managers and shareholders and standing in the way of the imperatives of national and international economic policy, Delaware found a third way that avoided both horns of the dilemma: it took advantage of a pending New York action to stay the Delaware action and avoid making any decision at all. In this article, we tell this story, analyzing the doctrinal issues under Delaware corporate and procedural law, and discussing the implications of this episode for our understanding of the landscape of US corporate law making
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