Tag Archives: SEC

ERISA Regulations Should Address Evolving Nature of Prudence and Duty of Impartiality

By | March 15, 2022
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The use of financially material environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) information by pension fiduciaries in investment analysis continues to be a hot topic. On October 14, 2021, the US Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued a proposed rule entitled “Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights.” As the title suggests, the proposal addresses the fiduciary… Read More »

INSIGHTS ON CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND FINANCIAL REPORTING QUALITY

By | March 9, 2022
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Introduction Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has come to the forefront of both academic and popular attention. Firms publicize their commitments to CSR, establish CSR governance structures, and issue CSR reports. CSR is defined as the economic, legal, moral, and philanthropic actions of firms that influence the quality of life of relevant stakeholders. Socially responsible firms promote efforts to… Read More »

Beijing Stock Exchange: How China Reforms Share Listing and Trading Rules to Promote SME Finance?

By | March 8, 2022
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When addressing the Global Trade in Services Summit in September 2021, President Xi Jinping announced the launch of the Beijing Stock Exchange (BSE), which provides an extra financing channel for the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).[1] The BSE has been built upon the select tier of China’s National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ), an over-the-counter market… Read More »

Giving the ‘green light’ to executive pay? Shareholder monitoring and pay-for-carbon-performance

By | March 7, 2022
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Climate change poses significant risks to the private sector, which researchers estimate to be in the order of $2.5-24 trillion, or up to 17% of global assets under management. However, given the most significant climate change risks may not materialize within the tenure of current corporate and financial actors, direct incentives to avert the tragedy of the horizon may… Read More »

The costs of controversial political connections: Evidence from political scandals

By | March 3, 2022
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Having “friends in high places” can bring many benefits. But what happens if these “friends” are involved in shady business dealings, use taxpayer funds to finance lavish offices or vacations, are subject to sexual harassment lawsuits, or express homophobic or xenophobic views? In a recent working paper, we study whether connections to controversial politicians exposes firms… Read More »

Financing Climate Justice: Taxation-and-Bonds Strategy

By | March 2, 2022
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During the most recent United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP-26) on Climate Change, fair financialization of climate justice endeavors gained unprecedented momentum. This post proposes a novel taxation-and-bonds strategy that targets redistributing the gains of a warming earth around the world to offset the losses of global warming. Contemporary attempts to finance climate change mitigation… Read More »

Why the GDPR May Fail to Protect Individuals from Privacy Risks Produced by Artificial Intelligence Applications And A New Transparency-Based Approach to AI Governance May Help

By | March 1, 2022
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In 2021, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, disclosed how the company’s machine-learning-powered services have been exploiting the personal data of millions of users. According to internal documents collected by Haugen during her time at Facebook, the tech giant has intentionally collected consumers’ personal data and misused its artificial intelligence (AI) systems to boost corporate profits, and it has done so… Read More »

Russian Sanctions will Compel Further Adoption of Cryptocurrency and Increase Compliance Risks for Cryptocurrency Companies

By | February 28, 2022
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This post also appears on Duke Law’s Lawfire blog In the wake of the U.S. and its allies imposing unprecedented economic and financial sanctions on Russia, there has been a number of articles about the role cryptocurrency may play in undermining these sanctions (see here, here, and here). While the situation is fluid and defies easy predictions, western… Read More »

Tax heist using American Depositary Receipts

By | February 22, 2022
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“It May Be the Biggest Tax Heist Ever.”, wrote the New York Times on January, 20th 2020. “It” being so-called cum-ex trades in which traders file for dividend tax refunds for taxes that they never paid. Surprisingly, several European Treasuries did (and do) indeed refund these never-paid-taxes. Investigations by a consortium of journalists estimated these refunds at… Read More »

State of muddlement in money creation affairs

By | February 21, 2022
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“Commercial bank money – that is, people’s bank deposits – is created through the intermediation of credit.” — Bank of England (2021) In the history of life on Earth, each mass extinction brings with it evolutionary opportunities to fill the niches that those extinctions have emptied (they are called “evolutionary radiations”). For example, the rise… Read More »