The March 2023 bank run on Credit Suisse (CS) has received much attention. As a result of this bank run, the Swiss banking regulator (FINMA) pushed for the merger of CS with UBS, another large Swiss bank, thus creating one of the biggest banking unions in history. The demise of CS shook faith in a… Read More »
In the world of student loans, things look grim. Borrowers owe an estimated $1.6 trillion in student loans—a figure which is second only to mortgage debt in the total amount of consumer debt attributed to Americans. Student loan borrower were hopeful that the Biden administration—which promised to provide up to $20,000 in relief for student… Read More »
In the lead-up to the debate about the Data Privacy Act of 2023, Financial Services Committee members received letters from consumer groups and finance trade associations, urging them to vote for or against the contentious legislation. The Data Privacy Act of 2023 garnered opposition from consumer advocacy groups and support from finance trade associations. The… Read More »
Variance among assessments of a company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activities is not necessarily the product of error or bias, as is sometimes presumed in the literature. The presumption that there is a singular ESG value at which assessments must converge is counter-productive to the very nature of ESG reforms, which stem from the… Read More »
Continuous auditing (CA) was introduced decades ago to enhance the quality of assurance by continuously and automatically analyzing data running through a corporate system based on rules defined by internal auditors. As CA is designed to provide more feedback on deviations and more timely feedback compared to traditional auditing, it is expected to enhance monitoring.… Read More »
Even before law school, I became fascinated by what is sometimes called the “law of creditors and debtors.” This cat-and-mouse game between creditors and the people who owe them money was intellectually stimulating—and, I realized, terribly important. Even though the first year of law school focuses on liability, debt collection becomes all-important when judgment debtors… Read More »
With globalized finance and trade, it has become common for multinational corporations to tap US debt capital market for finance. Despite US law governing the debt, the issuer’s place of incorporation would typically remain in other jurisdictions, such as some offshore “letterbox” jurisdictions (the Cayman Islands, BVI, Bermuda, etc.). The cross-border nature of this structure… Read More »
Climate change poses one of the most pressing risks to our society and the global economy, with profound and wide-ranging consequences. Research has shown that rising temperatures and tropical cyclones reduce the global economic growth rate by approximately 0.25 and 1.3 percentage points per year (Burke, Hsiang, and Miguel, 2015; Carleton and Hsiang, 2016). Despite… Read More »
In the last few years, there has been an increase in the proportion of socially and environmentally responsible shareholders. These shareholders are not solely concerned with the profits generated by a firm. Instead, they also care about its social and environmental impact. Some empirical studies have already established that this has implications for firms’ stock… Read More »
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the primary securities regulator for U.S. public companies, so its oversight effectiveness is critical for well-functioning capital markets. However, the regulator’s Division of Enforcement, which handles the investigation and prosecution of possible securities violations, has frequently been criticized and characterized as ineffective by the media, congressional members, and… Read More »
