Economists have long been concerned with the effects of mergers on labor markets.[1] One common concern is that worker productivity has increased dramatically in the past half-century, yet there has not been a corresponding increase in wages.[2] Although inflation-adjusted wages have risen, they have risen at a much slower rate than the increases in worker productivity.[3] In short, employers are extracting more from their employees without a lockstep increase in wages.[4] While economists generally accept the existence of this issue, there is reasonable disagreement as to its causes.[5] Wage growth is influenced by countless factors and it is very difficult…
Author: Christopher Halm
Introduction The shareholder-oriented model of corporate governance,[1] identified by two authors at the beginning of the millennium as the universal pattern of convergence of national corporate laws,[2] is still the subject of a vibrant debate that is far from over.[3] The European Union has just concluded a corporate law harmonization cycle that covered almost two decades and that fully embraces a shareholder-oriented vision.[4] In the United States the “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” signed by 181 CEOs in the August of 2019,[5] supporting a stakeholder-oriented approach,[6] appears to be a true Copernican revolution if compared to the…
I. Overview With stocks plummeting and employees forced to work in a new environment, company directors are faced with unprecedented challenges in light of the coronavirus.[1] Amid the many concerns, protecting corporate information has been a critical issue as many employees are forced to work remotely.[2] Since remote access increases the frequency of digital exchanges of sensitive information, directors must account for new technological risks that affect both shareholders and stakeholders. Delaware’s General Corporation Law holds that the board of directors has a general duty to protect and promote the interests of the corporation and its shareholders. [3] Shareholders are…
Over ten years after the inception of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (the “SEC”) whistleblower program, and more than two years after a vote in favor of proposing amendments to the program, the SEC narrowly passed[1] a new set of rules imposing noteworthy modifications.[2] The whistleblower program, first established in July 2010 under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act through the addition of Rule 21F to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934,[3] promotes original information tips on violations of securities laws through incentives in the form of monetary awards and anti-retaliation protections.[4] The program has seen…
Information collecting and online tracking is an extremely lucrative industry controlled by data brokers who manipulate humans as products.[1] Data brokers are those who acquire information across thousands of channels, aggregate it based on a target audience, and resell it to interested third parties.[2] Data brokers collect information such as name, address, age, income, education, occupation, race, social media use, web history, credit card or purchase history and enter it into their algorithm to predict future actions.[3] They obtain the information from government databases, public websites, and other data brokers’ database and the algorithms often use past trends to hypothesize…
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced employers and employees to change the way they think about the physical workplace.[1] Workplace rules, regulations, and protections have had to adjust to meet this change.[2] Workers have sought various adjustments to their workplace, and some have turned to workplace accommodation regulations that existed before the pandemic.[3] Specifically, workers are asking for accommodations under the existing structure of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (“ADA”).[4] As states and municipalities begin to lift their shelter-in-place mandates, many workers have been or will be asked to return to their offices and worksites.[5] However, some workers are…
Is the Gig Up? Since Mateo Garnica wrote on this blog in 2019, there have been a few more developments in the fight for the gig economy.[1] Most recently, the 1st District Court of Appeal for California granted Uber and Lyft’s emergency stay on the preliminary injunction that would’ve forced the two companies to reclassify their workers as full employees.[2] Classifying previous independent contractors as full-time employees would force these employers to provide workers with a “minimum wage, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, and paid family leave.”[3] The court order only came after the companies threatened to…
As the pandemic rapidly spread throughout the world at the beginning of this year, financial markets fell into disarray.[1] If you are following market trends, however, you have probably seen that despite dropping to drastically low levels in February and March, stock prices have returned, and even surpassed, pre-pandemic numbers, causing speculation of a precarious financial bubble.[2] Unfortunately, not every market trend is now on the upswing, demonstrating that perhaps the pandemic cannot take the blame for all current financial developments. One such notable downward trend is the steady decline of the broker-dealer.[3] A broker-dealer, stripped down to a simple…
Many attorneys choose law so they can be done with math. Unfortunately, attorneys still need to perform some calculations, especially when practicing securities law. For example, counting investors is a legal and mathematical question of great importance. Its outcome decides whether a company will be exempt from investment company regulations.[1] To put it in another way, counting investors decides whether a company needs to spend an additional six figures or more annually to comply with investment company regulations. Thus, it is paramount for attorneys to count a company’s investors accurately. The Investment Company Act of 1940 (the 1940 Act) provides…
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