Blakes Continuity Podcast: COVID-19: The Regulatory Impact on Pensions
Viewpoints: Portfolio Company Pension Liabilities
JONES DAY TALKS®: ESG: The Opportunities and the Risks
Q&A with Yumi Narita, NYC Office of the Comptroller - In late May, Yumi Narita, Executive Director of Corporate Governance at the New York City Office of the Comptroller, spoke with Stephen Brown, Senior Advisor, KPMG Board...more
ESG stands for “environmental, social, and governance.” Though often overlooked, two recent cases — Spence v. American Airlines and Exxon v. Arjuna Capital, LLC — focus on G’s place in the ESG initialism. Here, we break...more
On February 23, 2024, the Delaware Court of Chancery issued a decision in West Palm Beach Firefighters’ Pension Fund v. Moelis & Co. emphasizing the primacy of the board of directors’ responsibility to manage a Delaware...more
On February 23, 2024, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster of the Delaware Court of Chancery invalidated a number of significant provisions in a stockholder agreement between a financial institution (the “Company”) and its...more
On January 2, the New York City (NYC) Comptroller, Brad Lander, the NYC Employees’ Retirement System, the NYC Teachers’ Retirement System, and the NYC Board of Education Retirement System, announced that they had submitted...more
In its finalized rule amending ERISA, the DOL makes financial factors paramount in a fiduciary’s responsibility to investors. On October 30, 2020, the US Department of Labor (DOL) published Financial Factors in Selecting...more
ESG—Environmental, Social, and Governance—investing is attracting the attention of pension funds, hedge funds, sell-side analysts, large money managers, lenders and banks, and political interest groups and activists, all of...more
On September 17, 2019, the Financial Post reported that British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCIMC), one of Canada’s largest pension funds, inadvertently failed to report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange...more
On Saturday, June 1, 2019, The Illinois General Assembly passed a bill (the “Diversity Disclosure Bill”) requiring most publicly held companies organized or headquartered in Illinois to include detailed demographic diversity...more
In 2018, California became the first state to require publicly held corporations with their principal executive offices in the state to have a minimum number of female directors. Following this groundbreaking, and perhaps...more
On September 30, 2018, despite voicing some reservations, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law SB-826, mandating that publicly traded corporations have women on their boards. The new law will require all California...more
Board composition is increasingly at the forefront of governance activists’ focus and initiatives. A recent, high-profile example of this comes from New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer and the New York City Pension...more
In this post, I noted a recent study by Professor Tracie Woidtke at the University of Tennessee concluding that social-issue shareholder-proposal activism appears to be negatively related to firm value. I therefore raised...more
1. Question: What is the Volcker Rule, and when does it take effect? Answer: The Volcker Rule was enacted into law as section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank...more
Is executive pay becoming a hot button issue for activist hedge funds? While executive pay has long been under scrutiny from standard-issue corporate governance activists, such as union pension funds, the interest of some...more