News & Media

Investors warn ‘fluffy’ ESG metrics are being gamed to boost bonuses, Financial Times, August 27, 2023

“ESG in pay “enables executives to obtain extra compensation when equity pay is not rewarding”, Lucian Bebchuk, the director of the corporate governance program at Harvard Law School and co-author of the research, said in an interview. “But they are happy to get extra compensation also when equity pay is rewarding.”

Imagine a world where CEOs get paid $3 million a year, Nation of Change, April 19, 2023

“There have been many studies showing that CEO pay does not closely correspond to returns to shareholders. A few examples are here, here, and here. Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried’s book, Pay Without Performance, presents a wide range of evidence on this issue.”

Harvard Law faculty among the most cited legal scholars by SSRN, Harvard Law Today, March 23, 2023

“As of the start of March 2023, six Harvard Law School faculty members were featured in the top 25, making Harvard Law School the law school with the highest representation in the top 100 most-cited faculty. They are: Cass R. Sunstein (#1 with 6,051 citations), Lucian Bebchuk (#2 with 3,591 citations)”

Qualms about Linking Executive Pay to Social Goals, BBN Times, February 21, 2023

“Bebchuk and Tallarita focus on the actual behavior of the 97 US companies in the S&P 100–which together represent over half the total value of the US stock market.”

Can you make money following an activist investor into a stock? It depends, Forbes, February 16, 2023

“Trying to get this remaining ‘tail’ of the bump in stock price would require getting quickly into the stock right upon the filing of the 13D by the activist,” says Harvard Law School’s Lucian Bebchuk, who has studied investor activism for years. “This requires monitoring and a quick reaction that would be difficult for an individual investor.”

Why Business Should Dispense with ESG, CNS News, February 10, 2023

“Expansive or pluralistic stakeholder theory, according to Harvard Law School scholars Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita, “posits that the welfare of each stakeholder group has independent value, and consideration for stakeholders might entail providing them with some benefits at the expense of shareholders.”

Israelis Must Protest Until the Government Gets It, Haaretz, February 8, 2023

“Fifty-six famous economists, including 11 Nobel Prize winners, signed a letter of protest this week against the government’s plan to weaken the justice system. Among them were MIT’s Peter Diamond and Daron Acemoglu; the University of Chicago’s Luigi Zingales and Marianne Bertrand; Harvard University’s Oliver Hart, Lucian Bebchuk and Erik Maskin; Stanford University’s Paul Milgrom; and Princeton University’s Daniel Kahneman.”

Top Int’l Economists to Netanyahu: ‘Undermining Judiciary Detrimental to Prosperity and Growth’, Haaretz, February 8, 2023

“Among the known and respected economists are Peter Diamond and Daron Acemoglu of MIT; Luigi Zingales and Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago; Eric Maskin, Lucian Bebchuk and Oliver Hart of Harvard; Paul Milgrom of Stanford; and Daniel Kahneman of Princeton.”

Twitter’s Corporate Leaders Pushed their Stakeholders under the (Musk) Bus, ProMarket, February 8, 2023

“In a new study, we examine whether, in negotiating the sale to Elon Musk, Twitter’s corporate leaders took into account the commitments to employees and core values that they had put forward during the years preceding the deal. We find that Twitter’s corporate leaders chose to disregard these commitments and to focus exclusively on the interests of shareholders and those of the corporate leaders themselves. We discuss the implications of our analysis for the heated debate on stakeholder governance.”

Decisions, Decisions – The Thorny Problems At The Heart Of Stakeholderism, National Law Review January 27, 2023

According to the authors, stakeholder governance “refers to the increasingly influential view that corporate leaders should be encouraged and relied on to use their discretion to serve stakeholders and not only shareholders”. Lucian A. Bebchuk, Kobi Kastiel, and Anna Toniolo, How Twitter Pushed Stakeholders Under The Bus, 25 (Jan. 2023).

CEOs Who Are All Talk and No Action on Inclusion Still Benefit, Bloomberg, January 19, 2023

“The use of ESG metrics in pay packages “likely serves the interests of executives, not of stakeholders,” conclude the authors, Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita.”

Trouble on Board: DEI Promises Abound but How Prepared Are Companies to Meet Those Goals?, Risk & Insurance, September 26, 2022

”Numerous studies by Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School, have found that corporate policies continue to benefit shareholders and corporate leaders with little gains for employees, consumers and other shareholders firms are pledging to look out for in their DEI and ESG statements.”

BlackRock pulls back support for climate and social resolutions, Financial Times, July 26, 2022

”Big asset managers wanted ‘to appear to be responsible stewards’, said Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School. But they also seek ‘to accommodate corporate managers, and avoid adversarial relationships with them . . . and to reduce the odds of a political and public backlash against their power’. ‘This combination of incentives explains why BlackRock would want to signal its contribution and commitment to addressing climate change by supporting more disclosure —but not wanting to go beyond that,’ he said.”

Defending the S.E.C.’s climate ‘evolution’, The New York Times DealBook, June 16, 2022

“A bipartisan group of 18 former top S.E.C. officials and legal luminaries are standing up for the agency’s power to make rules that require companies to disclose more information about their climate effects and risks. The group includes the former S.E.C. chairs Harvey Pitt, who was appointed by George W. Bush, and Mary Schapiro, who was appointed by Barack Obama, along with top legal experts like Leo Strine Jr., the former chief justice of Delaware’s Supreme Court, and Lucian Bebchuk, a corporate law professor at Harvard.”

Have Business Roundtable Companies Lived Up to Their Stakeholder Commitments?, ProMarket, May 18, 2022

“Our empirical investigation focusses on examining whether the companies whose CEOs joined the BRT Statement have indeed lived up to it. If the BRT Statement was a meaningful commitment, we would expect subsequent communications, governance principles, and internal arrangements to be consistent with the Statement’s approach. We find, however, that this was not the case. The patterns we document are consistent with the PR Hypothesis and inconsistent with the Commitment Hypothesis.”

Selling Twitter to Elon Musk Is Good for Investors. What About the Public?, The New York Times, April 27, 2022

“Corporate leaders and practitioners have been increasingly pledging to pay close attention to the interests of stakeholders, such as customers or society in the case of Twitter, and not only shareholders,” said Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School. Even so, a study of more than 100 recent $1 billion-plus deals that Mr. Bebchuk recently completed found that there had been little impact, with “large gains” for shareholders and corporate leaders and little or nothing for other constituencies.

Is it time to separate ‘E’ from ‘S’ and ‘G?, Financial Times, March 14, 2022

“But the rise of these ESG-linked bonus metrics can be dangerous to shareholders, employees and the environment, according to research published this month by Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita at Harvard Law School. Too often, these new ESG-linked bonuses are vague, opaque and ‘can be exploited by self-interested CEOs to inflate their pay-offs, with little or no accountability for actual performance,’ they said.”

The Flaws and Limits of ESG-Based Compensation, ProMarket, March 11, 2022

“In a recently released study, “The Perils and Questionable Promise of ESG-Based Compensation,” we provide a conceptual and empirical analysis of this practice, and we expose its fundamental flaws and limitations. The use of ESG-based compensation, we show, has questionable promise and poses significant perils.”

How the Covid-19 Pandemic Put Corporate Stakeholder Promises to the Test, ProMarket, February 25, 2022

“We examine more than 100 public company acquisitions, with an aggregate value exceeding $700 billion, that were announced during the pandemic. We find that those deals provided large gains for target shareholders as well as for corporate leaders themselves. However, although many transactions were perceived as potentially harmful for employees, corporate leaders generally didn’t bargain for any employee protections, including any cash compensation for post-closing termination. And corporate leaders also didn’t negotiate for any protections for customers, suppliers, communities, the environment, or other stakeholders.”

Why Top Management Must Change Fundamental Assumptions, Forbes, November 26, 2021

“According to studies made by Harvard Law Professor Lucian Bebchuk and his colleagues, there is no evidence that the firms in question have made any change in their actions since the 2019 declaration. Bebchuk concludes that the 2019 BRT declaration was “only for show.” In effect, we are dealing with a smokescreen: the goal of many major corporations has become undiscussable.”

The E in ESG Means Cancelling the S and the G, Epoch Times, October 19, 2021

“In his 1970 essay on the social responsibility of business, Milton Friedman wrote that when a corporate executive makes expenditures on pollution reduction beyond what’s in the best interests of the corporation or required by law, that executive is, in effect, imposing taxes and deciding how the tax proceeds should be spent. In their critique of the doctrine of stakeholderism as propounded by the Business Roundtable in its August 2019 statement of corporate purpose, Harvard Law School’s Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita note the Roundtable’s denial of the reality that the interests of shareholders and stakeholders can clash.”

The Ten Trillion Dollar Man: How Larry Fink became King of Wall St, Financial Times, October 6, 2021

“Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School and Scott Hirst of Boston University estimated in a 2019 paper titled “The Spectre of the Giant Three” that the trio’s combined average stakes in the 500 biggest listed US companies had vaulted from about 5 per cent in 1998 to over 20 per cent.”

Can Any Board Member Ever Be Truly Independent?, Directors & Boards, October 5, 2021

“‘Similarly, Lucian Bebchuk, the James Barr Ames Professor of Law, Economics and Finance and director of the program on corporate governance at Harvard Law School, says that directors nominated by institutional investors may bow to the goals of those shareholders.'”

SEC proposes new rule mandating funds disclose votes on executive pay, MarketWatch, September 29, 2021

“Researchers Lucian Bebchuk and Scott Hirst recently estimated that by the end of 2019, the largest three index fund managers — BlackRock Inc., State Street Global Advisors STT, and the Vanguard Group owned on average 21.4% of the shares of S&P 500 index corporations.”

The Regulators Are Coming After Sustainable Investing, WSJ, August 26, 2021

“A recent study by two Harvard law professors also raised concerns: After examining the corporate documents of over 100 signatories to the landmark 2019 Business Roundtable pledge to shift from shareholder to a broader stakeholder model, the academics concluded the commitment was “mostly for show.””

Fulfilling the Promise of The Business Roundtable’s Statement on Corporate Purpose, IR Magazine , August 25, 2021

“Harvard’s Professor Lucien Bebchuk is not alone in calling the pledge a ‘public relations move’ and pointing out ‘the failure to reflect the commitment to stakeholders in corporate governance guidelines’.”

Stakeholder Capitalism Is Slowly Advancing, WSJ, August 23, 2021

“Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita’s op-ed “‘Stakeholder’ Talk Proves Empty Again” (Aug. 19) is probably correct, as far as it goes. On its face, the Business Roundtable’s statement is far from having been meaningfully implemented. Market pressures from investors to sustain profits are substantial.”

Business can stop the ESG backlash by proving it’s making a difference, Financial Times, August 23, 2021

“To top it off, two Harvard Law School professors marked the second anniversary of the US Business Roundtable’s landmark endorsement of stakeholder governance by concluding that its statement had been “mostly for show”.”

Pledge on corporate values turns out to be mere PR, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 23, 2021

“The two Harvard Law professors, Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita, found only two companies that place other stakeholders on a par with shareholders. Both firms, Cummins and International Paper, had their guidelines in place before the Business Roundtable statement was written.”

Environmental, Social And Corporate Governance (ESG) Investing For All? Maybe There Is No Choice, Seeking Alpha, August 23, 2021

“In honor of the second anniversary of the BRT statement, Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School and colleagues have inveighed against the lack of progress that has been made toward greater emphasis on other stakeholders besides stockholders.”

Woke Capitalism: An Update, National Review, August 19, 2021

“The Wall Street Journal has a piece today by Lucian A. Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita that suggests I may have been onto something[…]The authors look at how the signatories of the Business Roundtable’s Statement on the “Purpose of a Corporation,” aimed at delivering value to all stakeholders, not only shareholders, have behaved since they signed two years ago.”

Is ESG a bottom-line risk?, Financial Times, August 18, 2021

“But a new report by Harvard Law professors Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita analysed hundreds of corporate documents and found these commitments to be little more than performance art.”

America’s top CEOs didn’t live up to their promises in Business Roundtable letter, researchers find, Fortune, August 5, 2021

“In their new paper, Bebchuk and Tallarita reasoned that if the statement represented a significant shift in corporate purpose by its signatories—CEO members of the BRT, representing America’s largest companies—then several important corporate documents at those companies would need to be revised.”

Investors are accused of being obsessed with short-term results. The popularity of growth stocks proves otherwise, MarketWatch, July 30, 2021

“Bebchuk points out another important factor that many overlook when complaining about Wall Street’s supposed obsession with the short term: Some of the corporate executives who are complaining the loudest may actually be trying to divert attention from their “managerial slack and underperformance.””

How To Prioritize Among Your Key Stakeholders, Forbes, July 25, 2021

“Studies by Harvard Law Professor Lucian Bebchuk and his colleagues have been unable to detect any change in behavior since before the BRT declaration and have concluded that it was just PR: shareholder value is still dominant.”

Getting Back to Business, City Journal, June 15, 2021

“Law professors Roberto Tallarita and Lucian Bebchuk found that 47 of 48 CEOs signed a Business Roundtable restatement of the purpose of a corporation without consulting their boards, which suggests a shift not in actual corporate goals but in rhetoric.”

How boards need to adapt to stakeholder capitalism, Fortune, May 3, 2021

“In his critique of the Business Roundtable’s 2019 statement on stakeholder capitalism, Harvard Law professor Lucian Bebchuk said he asked the public relations offices of BRT companies whether their CEOs had consulted with their boards before signing the statement. Forty-seven of the 48 that responded said “no.” Bebchuk took that as a sign of the lack of seriousness of the BRT change. But it also raises a question about whether boards are doing their jobs.”

Why Business Must Shift From Value Extraction To Value Creation, Forbes, May 4, 2021

“However, in the period since the BRT declaration was issued, Harvard Law Professor Lucian Bebchuk and his colleagues have not detected significant change in corporate behavior. Few of the signatory CEOs obtained the approval of their boards to sign the announcement.”

You can force your fund manager to steward the firms where your money is invested, Economic Times, April 10, 2021

“Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School, argues that “investment managers bear the costs of stewardship activities, but capture only a small fraction of the benefits they create.” This creates the issue of free riding, where some asset managers may have less incentive to allocate resources on active engagement with issuers if they receive the benefits from their peer group already engaging with the same set of issuers.”

The Rise of an Antitrust Pioneer, New York Times, March 10, 2021

“Concerns about political donations already top investors’ E.S.G. proposals, according to new research from Roberto Tallarita, an associate director of Harvard Law’s corporate governance program.”

On the moral responsibility of business: An alternative view, Business World, March 1, 2021

“According to Harvard Law School Professor Lucien Bebchuk, the Business Roundtable’s statement that companies have responsibilities to society equal to their responsibilities to shareholders is “largely cosmetic,” adding that “… when CEOs and other corporate leaders face choices, they do not give independent weight to the interests of stakeholders.””

How to get managers’ incentives right, Economist, February 6, 2021

“Mr Bebchuk says this short-termism “bogeyman” has been enlisted to argue in favour of insulating managers from shareholder control using restricted voting rights, special shares and the rest. Some think executives may be constrained by the concentration of ownership in a few institutional hands, as the fund-management industry consolidates.”

Business School Briefing: respect staff, graduates’ progress, gender divide, Financial Times, February 1, 2020

“In further reading, the always provocative Lucian Bebchuk’s Harvard Business Review essay about what he says are the overstated perils of short-termism: “Those who are concerned about short-termism should focus on reforming [executive] pay arrangements before considering the adoption of measures that would insulate managers and bring about such costs,” he argues.”

Elon Musk once argued that Tesla should be a private company but Wall Street has proved him wrong, MarketWatch, January 27, 2021

“Our analysis clarifies widespread misconceptions about the mechanism of common ownership. For example, in a series of award-winning papers, Lucian A. Bebchuk, Alma Cohen, and Scott Hirst have argued that because common owners such as index fund managers have “incentives, which would lead them to limit intervention with their portfolio companies […] it is implausible to expect that index fund managers would seek to facilitate significant anticompetitive behavior.” “

Corporations Are the New Activists After Capitol Riot. Stay Tuned for Proxy Season., Barrons, January 16, 2021

“Our analysis clarifies widespread misconceptions about the mechanism of common ownership. For example, in a series of award-winning papers, Lucian A. Bebchuk, Alma Cohen, and Scott Hirst have argued that because common owners such as index fund managers have “incentives, which would lead them to limit intervention with their portfolio companies […] it is implausible to expect that index fund managers would seek to facilitate significant anticompetitive behavior.”

Is There Really a Conflict Between Better Corporate Governance and More Competitive Product Markets?, ProMarket, January 6, 2021

“Some critics also believe that stakeholder capitalism, undertaken at the discretion of CEOs, may not help stakeholders. Instead, it could impede or delay reforms that could benefit stakeholders, argue Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita of the Harvard Law School. The professors suggest that laws and regulations could better force or incentivize corporations to improve stakeholder treatment.”

Is There Really a Conflict Between Better Corporate Governance and More Competitive Product Markets?, Barrons, 1/6/2021

“Some critics also believe that stakeholder capitalism, undertaken at the discretion of CEOs, may not help stakeholders. Instead, it could impede or delay reforms that could benefit stakeholders, argue Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita of the Harvard Law School. The professors suggest that laws and regulations could better force or incentivize corporations to improve stakeholder treatment.”

Breaking down BP’s bet on carbon credits, Financial Times, December 18, 2020

“A few months ago Lucian Bebchuk, the James Barr Ames professor of law, economics, and finance at Harvard Law School — and a longstanding sceptic about ESG — produced research that should give sustainability evangelists pause for thought.”

The Business Roundtable’s Statement on Corporate Purpose One Year Later, Directors and Boards, December 14, 2020

“Further evidence that the BRT statement was mostly greenwashing comes from surveys by legal scholars Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita. They found that most CEOs who signed the statement had not gotten approval to do so from their companies’ board of directors, which one would expect in the event of a major shift in corporate policy and purpose. They also found that the corporate governance guidelines of a sample of signatory firms had not been modified to reflect the statement’s emphasis on social responsibility and stakeholders.”

Active managers see value in these 3 company practices but indexers hate them. Who’s right?, MSN, November 26, 2020

“The size and reach of indexers — commanding around one-third of public equity — give them outsized influence, and a wide critical following. But they have small stewardship staffs and minuscule budgets to address particular companies, according to research led by Harvard Law School’s Lucian Bebchuk — no more than 45 people covering well more than 3,000 U.S. companies.”

There’s an Oligopoly in Asset Management. This Researcher Says It Should Be Broken Up., Institutional Investor, November 24, 2020

“Research from Lucian A. Bebchuk and Scott Hirst has found that companies with a high amount of index fund ownership have increased stock buybacks more rapidly than peers with more diverse ownership.”

Stewards’ inquiry, The Economist, November 11, 2020

“A paper in 2017 by Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen and Scott Hirst, a trio of law professors, found that asset managers mostly avoid making shareholder proposals, nominating directors or conducting proxy contests to vote out managers. Index funds are especially at fault. Their business model is to avoid the costs of company research and deep engagement. The law professors reckoned that the big three asset managers devoted less than one person-workday a year to stewardship.”

Social issues take center stage at conferences, Pension & Investments, November 6, 2020

“Lucian Bebchuk, the James Barr Ames Professor of Law, Economics and Finance and director of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School who spoke on the same panel, said he agreed that the question is what is the best way to address societal issues.”

Stakeholder capitalism: Is it working, or is it all talk?, Fortune, November 3, 2020

“Bebchuk believes that all the corporate talk of stakeholder capitalism is “largely cosmetic.” In his research, he and his colleagues have found that when faced with decisions, CEOs rarely give weight to the wants and needs of stakeholders, largely because there is little value or profit incentive to do so. “

Debating stakeholder capitalism, Fortune, November 3, 2020

“Taking the con was Lucian Bebchuk, professor at Harvard Law School, who published a major academic paper earlier this year called The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance. It’s long, but in a nutshell, he thinks the Business Roundtable’s statement last year that companies have responsibilities to society equal to their responsibilities to shareholders is “largely cosmetic.”

Stakeholder Capitalism Needs Gov’t Oversight To Work, Law360, November 2, 2020

“Moreover, corporate leaders are not incented to prioritize the interests of stakeholders, as concluded in a recent study by Harvard professors Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita. “

Governance experts call for US Stakeholder Capitalism Act, Board Agenda, October 28, 2020

“Perhaps the most notable comes from academics Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita, who say they found little evidence of change in Roundtable members. “Notwithstanding statements to the contrary, corporate leaders are generally still focused on shareholder value. They can be expected to protect other stakeholders only to the extent that doing so would not hurt share value,” they write in the Wall Street Journal.”

Getting serious about stakeholder capitalism, Manila Times, October 27, 2020

“This led professor Lucian Bebchuk of the Harvard Law School to remark that “stakeholder capitalism seems mostly for show.” He contacted the companies whose CEOs signed the statement and asked who was the highest-level decision maker to approve the decision. “

Reclaiming Leadership In The Age Of Agile, Forbes, October 25, 2020

“Yet since the declaration was issued, researchers have found no indication of significant change in corporate behavior. Harvard Law Professor Lucian Bebchuk and colleagues found that few of the signatories obtained the approval of their boards to sign the announcement. Nor has there been any apparent effort to change the many processes and practices that reinforce the goal of maximizing shareholder value.”

Bringing Ethics Back to Friedman’s Call to Purpose for the Next 50 Years, ProMarket, October 7, 2020

As another essay by Bebchuk, Tallarita, and Mr. Kobi Kastiel examining the efficacy of stakeholder constituency statutes in this ProMarket series concludes, there should be “substantial doubt [about]… relying on the discretion of corporate leaders, as stakeholderism advocates, to address concerns about the adverse effects of corporations on their stakeholders.”

Activist investor pushes for News Corp voting changes, AFR, October 6, 2020

“Shareholders are willing to pay a premium for shares of companies that have excellent corporate governance. Supermajority voting requirements have been found to be one of [six] entrenching mechanism that are negatively related to company performance, according to What Matters in Corporate Governance by Lucien Bebchuk, Alma Cohen and Allen Ferrell of the Harvard Law School,” Mr Steiner’s proposal said.

What is stakeholder capitalism?, Economist, September 19, 2020

Some bosses claim they can do this, keen to win public praise and placate politicians. But they are insincere stewards, according to Lucian Bebchuk, Kobi Kastiel and Roberto Tallarita, of Harvard Law School. Their analysis of so-called constituency statutes in more than 30 states, which give bosses the right to consider stakeholder interests when considering the sale of their company, is sobering.

Milton Friedman’s hazardous feedback loop, Responsible Investor, September 14, 2020

“We continue to go back and forth. In 2019, to much fanfare, 181 CEOs of the US Business Roundtable publicly committed to manage corporations for stakeholders – reversing their 1997 statement that upheld shareholder primacy! Not so fast, countered Harvard Law Professors Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita, who argued that stakeholderism can backfire in insulating corporate leaders from external accountability and compromising economic performance… to the detriment of broader stakeholders!”

Revisiting Milton Friedman’s Critique of Stakeholderism, Bloomberg, September 11, 2020

“One of the papers presented at the Chicago conference channels Friedman and questions the logic of shareholder capitalism. “The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance” is by Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita of Harvard Law School. “Stakeholderism,” it says, ‘would increase the insulation of corporate leaders from shareholders, reduce their accountability, and hurt economic performance.'”

The Illusory Promise of “Stakeholderism”: Why Embracing Stakeholder Governance Would Fail Stakeholders, Pro Market, September 8, 2020

“In The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance, which we will present at the Stigler Center’s Political Economy of Finance conference later this week, we critically examine “stakeholderism,” the increasingly influential view that corporate leaders should give weight to the interests of non-shareholder constituencies (stakeholders).”

Under the Bus Go Stakeholders, Say Harvard Researchers, Agenda, September 4, 2020

“That conclusion comes from a recent study about whose interests it appears corporate leaders bargained for during the past two decades at companies that are governed by so-called constituency statutes. Such laws were passed in more than 30 states back in the days of corporate raiders and allowed boards to consider other stakeholders during sale negotiations. But those constituency statutes did not have any meaningful impact, according to the study, which was posted on the Harvard corporate governance blog by Harvard’s corporate governance program director Lucian Bebchuk and two co-authors, Kobi Kastiel, an assistant law professor at Tel Aviv University, and Roberto Tallarita, the associate director at Harvard Law’s governance program. “[C]onstituency statutes failed to deliver the benefits to stakeholders that they were supposed to produce,” the trio asserts.”

The Business Roundtable and ‘Stakeholder Capitalism’ — a Retrospective, InsideSources, September 3, 2020

“Contrarily, Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita, director and associate director, of the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance, published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal (“‘Stakeholder’ Capitalism Seems Mostly for Show,” August 7), where they reported on their study results on the companies that signed the 2019 Business Roundtable “Statement.” Of the 48 companies responding to their survey, only one said the decision was approved by the board of directors.”

Are Corporate CEOs Worth $20 Million?, CEPR, August 31, 2020

“The best place to start on the evidence is the great book by Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried, Pay Without Performance. While this book is now somewhat dated (it was published in 2004) it compiles much of the literature available at the time on the relationship of CEO pay to returns to shareholders. It includes many studies that show CEOs pay often bear little resemblance to what they do for shareholders. For example, the pay of oil executives skyrockets when the world price of oil rises, an event for which they presumably are not responsible. Another study found that CEOs tend to get big pay increases when they appear on the cover of a major business magazine, even though returns to shareholders generally lag the overall market.”

Picturing What Good Agile Looks Like, Forbes, August 30, 2020

“For instance, important research by Harvard Law professor Lucian Bebchuk and colleagues shows that firms that profess to be acting in the interests of all the stakeholders are mostly acting in the interest of the shareholders and the executives. The professed support for stakeholder capitalism, says Bebchuk, “is mostly for show.” In effect, the principles that are really driving behavior in those firms are quite different from the professed goals. Understanding a firm’s principles means going “inside the engine room” and finding out what’s actually driving behavior.”

Is the Stakeholder Pledge Just a ‘PR Move?’ Directors Respond, Agenda, August 28, 2020

“The widely acclaimed pledge that 181 CEOs signed last year to redefine the purpose of corporations was “largely a public-relations move,” according to Lucian Bebchuk, one of the country’s best-known academics on corporate governance and founder of the influential blog the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. More importantly, writes Bebchuk, most CEOs who joined the pledge never planned to shift from the current model of shareholder primacy”

How’s the CEO ‘Stakeholder Pledge’ Working Out? Depends Who You Ask, WSJ, August 28, 2020

“The view that it is possible to always strike a win-win for shareholders and other stakeholders is misguided, said Lucian Bebchuk, the director of the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance: “There are a lot of decisions where there is a tradeoff.” Mr. Bebchuk, a critic of stakeholder capitalism proposals, said the current regulations and corporate bylaws often demand that investors emerge as the winner when a tradeoff is necessary—even if other stakeholder interests need to be considered.”

Governance week: stakeholderism, US election, IoD departure, ESG blow, Board Agenda, August 21, 2020

“However, not everyone is convinced “stakeholder” governance is real. Academics Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita of Harvard Law School have written a series of articles, culminating this week, claiming the evidence they’ve looked at suggest the Business Roundtable statement was “largely a public-relations move rather than a signal of a significant shift in how corporations treat stakeholders”.”

The insidious downside of ‘stakeholderism’, FT, August 21, 2020

“Given the myriad global catastrophes that have led to this new wave of stakeholder capitalism, it is safe to surmise that “constituency statutes” did not achieve everything they set out to. Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard Law professor, has looked more deeply into the issue and has a sobering message.”

Update on the Purpose of a Corporation, Lexology, August 20, 2020

“On the other side, Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita, the director and associate director, respectively, of the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance, published an op-ed article Stakeholder’ Capitalism Seems Mostly for Show, previewing their study, “The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance,” which is scheduled for publication in the autumn.”

Not (Necessarily) for Profit Alone, National Review, August 20, 2020

“A forthcoming study from the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance aims to puncture the “illusory promise” of the statement but mainly succeeds in proving that it has an illusory premise. Two researchers contacted the companies whose CEOs signed the statement to see if their boards of directors had agreed to the decision. Only one of the 48 companies that responded said its board had done so. Their study concluded that the CEOs did not mean for the statement to lead to major changes in their conduct or their companies’ conduct. This finding should not be scandalous or even surprising, though, given that nothing in the statement suggested major changes were needed or on the way.”

One year ago, the Business Roundtable pledged to reshape the culture of business. Has anything changed?, Fast Company, August 19, 2020

“It depends on whom you ask. Lucian A. Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita, researchers at the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance, say it’s been little more than words. They examined promises of stakeholder governance by looking at how involved a company’s board was in the decision to adopt that pledge, and if the board’s corporate governance guidelines were amended afterward to reflect a commitment to bring value to stakeholders.”

How corporate actual responsibility, not social responsibility, would look, Washington Examiner, August 19, 2020

“Among the 181 CEOs who signed, Harvard Law School’s Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita have found only one whose board of directors gave approval. On the organization’s own website, the most recent “Principles of Corporate Governance” still dates from 2016.”

Revisiting the Business Roundtable’s ‘Stakeholder Capitalism,’ one year later, Fortune, August 19, 2020

““The statement is largely a rhetorical public relations move rather than the harbinger of meaningful change,” say Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita of the Harvard Law School in a 65-page article, “The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance.” They argue that the incentives CEOs face have not changed, so their behavior won’t change. The authors also examine corporate behavior when state laws have permitted companies to protect stakeholders other than shareholders; they say they found no evidence that companies do so any more often than when they are not permitted to do so.”

Last year CEOs pledged to serve stakeholders, not shareholders. You were right not to buy it, LA Times, August 19, 2020

“Had the companies that signed the Roundtable statement actually remade their management policies to raise the interests of customers, workers, and others above those of shareholders, argue Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita of Harvard Law School in a forthcoming paper, “the impact on society would be considerable.””

What’s New About Stakeholder Capitalism?, WSJ, August 14, 2020

“Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita helpfully document how last summer’s Business Roundtable mission statement did not outline a radical new vision of stakeholder capitalism (“‘Stakeholder’ Capitalism Seems Mostly for Show,” op-ed, Aug. 7). In fact, the statement is almost a carbon copy of the famous credo of Johnson & Johnson, beacon of capitalism, in place since 1943.”

Money Stuff: Robinhood Ends Its Popularity Contest, Bloomberg, August 10, 2020

“I was too generous to the CEOs! I shouldn’t have said “and the board.” Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita did a study of the Business Roundtable statement and got this hilarious result: […] They’re probably right, but my own preference is to assume that a CEO who signed the Business Roundtable statement is particularly likely to be an imperial CEO, that she is particularly likely to be a CEO who does not want to have to listen to or consult with shareholders, because that is actually what the Business Roundtable statement is about. If you assume the signing CEOs are the ones who don’t want to listen to shareholders, it’s not so surprising that they don’t bother consulting their directors either.”

Stakeholderism: study finds evidence in short supply, Board Agenda, August 7, 2020

“After looking the evidence from 48 US companies signed up to a ground breaking pledge to work for “all stakeholders” rather than shareholders alone, Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita, experts in governance at Harvard Law School, conclude than in reality nothing much has changed.”

Pandemic Highlights Need To Reform Shareholder Rights, Law360, July 29, 2020

“According to Bebchuk, shareholders may be reluctant to use any greater powers granted to them for fear of economic consequences. However, the Aviva case study reveals that shareholders will be prepared to use powers to control the board, and thus one might take the view that extending shareholder powers is unnecessary.”

Stakeholderism does not benefit stakeholders, shareholders, or society, JD Supra, July 13, 2020

“Harvard Law School Professor Lucien Bebchuk is an eminent scholar of corporate governance with whom I often disagree. He, for example, favors SEC rules requiring public companies to disclose their political spending. See Lucien Bebchuk & Robert Jackson, Shining the Light On Corporate Political Spending, 101 Georgetown L. J. 923-967 (2013). I do not. Id. (citing my opposition to SEC rulemaking). I was therefore pleased to see that I agree with many of his conclusions about stakeholder capitalism.”

How CEO pay in America got out of whack, Economist, July 11, 2020

“Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School, another expert in the field, has argued that American ceos, who tend to tower over their boardrooms, have too much influence over this opaque process. Don Delves of Willis Towers Watson, a consultancy with a big pay-advisory arm, points to “lots of positive changes” in pay-setting over the last two decades, from greater independence for compensation committees to more sophisticated setting of performance targets.”

The fight over corporate ‘stakeholderism’, Responsible Investor, June 26, 2020

What kind of debate finds Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, the US shareholder advocate, and Marty Lipton, founding partner of Wachtell Lipton, the corporate law firm, on the same side; and the US Council of Institutional Investors (CII) and Lucian Bebchuk, Harvard Law School professor on the other?
Yes, it’s the debate over the rather awkward neologism: ‘stakeholderism’.

Loeffler Got Lucrative Parting Gift From Public Company en Route to the Senate, NYT, May 6, 2020

BlackRock’s choice: Investment fiduciary or political activist?, The Hill, May 2, 2020

In a March 2020 working paper, “The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance,” Harvard Law School’s Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita conclude that the stakeholderism advocated by the Business Roundtable and BlackRock should be viewed “largely as a PR move.”

Hotelier’s Push for $126 Million in Small-Business Aid Draws Scrutiny, NYT, May 1, 2020

“The executive pay arrangements reflect a substantial disconnect between pay and performance, and raise serious corporate governance concerns,” said Lucian A. Bebchuk, director of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School.

Wall Street firm dangled up to 175% returns to investors using U.S. aid programs, Reuters, April 9, 2020

Lucian Bebchuk, a corporate governance expert at Harvard Law School who reviewed key assumptions of Arcadia’s pitch for Reuters, said that the potential returns, assuming they are estimated correctly, “suggests a design flaw on the part of the government’s program.”

Academics make an empirical case again stakeholderism, The Economist, March 12, 2020

In a new paper Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita of Harvard Law School pore over data from the companies of some of the brt signatories and find little evidence (so far) that the declaration has altered corporate behaviour. For example, they found that only three of the 20 companies whose ceos sit on the brt’s board—Boeing, Stryker and Marriott—have amended their corporate-governance guidelines in any way since the declaration. And none of the amendments had anything to do with stakeholder welfare, the authors say.

Lipton vs. Lucian, Reuters, March 10, 2020

Bebchuk and Lipton last squared off in public about five years ago, when the issue was so-called staggered boards: whether all directors rather than, say, one-third of them should face re-election each year. The professor and his activist-investor allies championed annual votes as an antidote to entrenched management, while Lipton and his partners at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz touted the stabilizing benefits of staggered ballots. The debate still rages.

Bebchuk versus Lipton: The battle continues, Financial Times, March 6, 2020

“Wall Street power broker Marty Lipton and professor Lucian Bebchuk are fighting again, this time over the Business Roundtable’s push for stakeholder capitalism.

Lipton was a strong supporter of the lobby group’s shift in August away from shareholder primacy. In a working paper published this month Bebchuk fired back, arguing that the emphasis on workers, the environment and other stakeholders “would increase the insulation of corporate leaders”, reduce their accountability and hurt shareholders.”

Harvard prof: ‘Stakeholder’ corporate paradigm is just P.R. – and bad for everyone, Reuters, March 4, 2020

Bebchuk said in a statement that Lipton and his co-authors failed to engage substantively with the arguments in his paper. “If Wachtell can provide substantive objections to these arguments, we will be happy to address them,” he said. Bebchuk also said that the paper’s critique of stakeholder governance is not intended to suggest that stakeholders do not have an interest in corporate governance – but that the flood of recent pronouncements does not actually serve those interests.

Robinhood Picked a Bad Day to Break, Bloomberg, March 3, 2020

“But here are a blog post and paper from Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita about “The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance.” As the title suggests, they are skeptical. For one thing, unlike a lot of stakeholder-governance advocates, they try to draw a clear distinction between the second and third theories, and dismiss the second theory as just another form of shareholder value:”

Passive Corporate Governance, Harvard Magazine, March-April 2020

“Now, a series of papers from the Law School’s Program on Corporate Governance sounds the alarm about the ways index-fund managers are using their expanding influence—or not. Ames professor of law, economics, and finance Lucian Bebchuk, director of the program, shows through empirical analysis that index funds often vote against the financial interests of investors.”

Ban On Insider Trading During ‘8-K Gaps’ Heads To Senate, Law360, January 13, 2020

“The bill’s name echoes a 2015 academic study that examined a decade of corporate leaders’ trades and found that “insiders can — and do — earn significant abnormal profits by trading during 8-K gaps.” One of the authors, Robert J. Jackson Jr., became an SEC commissioner in 2018 and helped inform the legislation.”

The Hidden Dangers of the Great Index Fund Takeover, Bloomberg, January 9, 2020

“In a 2019 paper, he writes that the Big Three spent minuscule amounts on stewardship. According to Morningstar, Vanguard employed 21 people to do the work of corporate oversight at a cost, by Bebchuk’s estimate, of about $6.3 million—a drop in the bucket considering Vanguard’s trillions of dollars under management.”

A new study measured just how strongly CEOs lean Republican, Quartz, December 26, 2019

 “Researchers at Harvard Law School and Tel Aviv University found that CEOs of the 1,500 largest US public companies donate “disproportionately more” to the Republican party and its candidates, with the median CEO directing 75% of his or her political contributions to Republicans. They also found that Republican-leaning CEOs lead companies with almost twice the asset value of companies led by Democratic-leaning executives.”

How Much Should Bosses be Paid?, BBC, December 18, 2019

“In their book Pay Without Performance, Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried argue that directors don’t actually care about linking pay to performance, but must “camouflage” this indifference from shareholders. The best form of compensation for fat cats is “stealth compensation”, and stock options seem to be a way to achieve that.”

CEO Money Talks, WSJ, December 17, 2019

“The study, by four economists at Harvard and Tel Aviv universities, looked at campaign contributions by 3,810 CEOs of S&P 1500 companies from 2000 through 2017. (Another 1,268 CEOs either didn’t contribute or did so in ways that the researchers couldn’t confidently identify, such as using nicknames or omitting company affiliations.)”

The disturbing seizure of the US giants of asset management in the markets, EN24, November 17, 2019

“In a study dubbed “the specter of” Giant Three “, HLS’s Lucian Bebchuk and Scott Hirst write that “regulators and other market players need to recognize – and take very seriously – the prospect of a scenario that would give birth to to three giants asset management.”

SEC backs shareholder proposal changes in win for corporations, Politico, November 5, 2019

“If the proposed rules are adopted, proxy advisers would face the prospect of suits against them by issuers that are displeased with their recommendation, and this prospect would operate to discourage recommendations that are unfavorable to managers and to impose costs that would be borne by investors,” said Lucian Bebchuk, a law school professor who directs a program on corporate governance.”

Horizontal Shareholding in the Modern Tech-Economy, Medium, October 13, 2019

“A paper Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried in the Journal of Economic Perspectives examined the effects of these cross horizontal shareholdings in three areas: executive compensation, income inequality and the split between corporate growth and economic growth in America.”

Activists thought BlackRock, Vanguard found religion on climate change. Not anymore, CNBC, October 13, 2019

“Concerns about conflicts of interest were recently studied by Harvard Law School corporate governance expert Lucian Bebchuk and Boston University law professor Scott Hirst, who also is the director of institutional investor research at Harvard Law’s corporate governance program. They concluded there were incentives for the biggest index fund companies to “defer excessively” to corporate managers.”

Index funds invest trillions but rarely challenge management, Reuters, October 8, 2019

“Challenging company management in proxy votes creates adversarial relationships that do not serve the business interests of the index funds, Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard University corporate governance scholar, wrote in a May research paper. …  Bebchuk and several other academics say the index fund providers do not want to rankle senior management at publicly traded U.S. corporations because they also want to make money selling index funds to their employees through company retirement plans.”

Is Your Retirement Fund Ruining Our Economy?, NPR, October 8, 2019

“The market for index funds, Bebchuk and Hirst argue, naturally favors bigness. Managing a trillion-dollar fund is not dramatically more expensive than managing a billion-dollar firm. This means the big firms can use their larger revenue streams to offer consumers lower fees, giving them a competitive advantage. Innovations in types of index funds are also easy to copy, meaning that it’s especially hard for small companies to disrupt the big ones.”

Redefining Capitalism: Bosses Eye Purpose Beyond Profit, Financial Review, September 13, 2019

“In universities, economists such as Eugene Fama declared that free markets were the only valid engine of growth and value, while law professors such as Lucian Bebchuk insisted corporate boards had no right to ever overrule investors, however short-term their focus.”

Three Fund Managers May Soon Control Nearly Half of All Corporate Voting Power, Researchers Warn, MarketWatch, July 17, 2019

“Concentrated ownership — what the authors refer to as the “Giant Three scenario” — means investors and policy makers need to keep a careful eye on the role of fund managers in upholding corporate governance, argue authors Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School and Scott Hirst of Boston University in a working paper titled The Specter of the Giant Three.”

Index-Fund Firms Gain Power, but Fall Short in Stewardship, Research Shows, WSJ, July 8, 2019

“In their second report, due to be published in the December 2019 issue of the Columbia Law Review, Profs. Bebchuk and Hirst say the index firms are found to be extremely cautious when it comes to their own spending on corporate stewardship or taking action to change the way public companies do business.”

What Boards Can Expect From the ‘Big Three’, Agenda, June 28, 2019

“Two recent academic studies co-authored by notable Harvard Law School professor Lucian Bebchuk provide evidence suggesting that, despite the large ownership stakes held by the so-called “Big Three,” the largest investors aren’t wielding their might in the form of say-on-pay votes, engagement with boards about director nominations, involvement in securities class action lawsuits, and governance reform efforts. Instead, for all their dominance, the largest investors may be incentivized to defer to companies’ management teams, the papers posit.”

BlackRock, Vanguard and SSGA tighten hold on US boards, Financial Times, June 15, 2019

“‘Policymakers and others must recognise — and must take seriously — the prospect of a Giant Three scenario. The plausibility of this scenario makes it important to understand the incentives of index fund managers,’ wrote Lucian Bebchuk and Scott Hirst in a paper entitled The Specter of the Giant Three. The pair point out that BlackRock, Vanguard and SSGA have quadrupled their collective ownership stake in S&P 500 companies over the past two decades, with each fund manager typically holding 5 per cent or more of US public companies.”

Chewy’s Dual-Class Structure Isn’t Ideal for Investors, The Street, June 14, 2019

“The potential advantages of dual-class structures (such as those resulting from founders’ superior leadership skills) tend to recede, and the potential costs tend to rise, as time passes from the IPO,” Lucian Bebchuk, Director of Harvard College’s Corporate Governance wrote in a research paper entitled The Untenable Case for Perpetual Dual-Class Stock.

Too Easy?, Investors Chronicle, June 13, 2019

“For example, Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School who specialises in executive pay, is in no doubt that rising executive pay since the 1980s is all about power and rent extraction under the cloak of corporate-governance rules. “

Do the Index Giants Have Too Much Control Over Corporate Voting?, SWFI, May 29, 2019

Report writers Lucian A. Bebchuk and Scott Hirst “document that the Big Three have almost quadrupled their collective ownership stake in S&P 500 companies over the past two decades.” More importantly, “they have captured the overwhelming majority of the inflows into the asset management industry over the past decade.”

Way more CEOs are Republicans than Democrats. Here’s the proof, CNN, May 14, 2019

“In a working paper released this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers at Harvard Law School and Tel Aviv University ran the names of all individuals to have run a company listed in the S&P 1500 between 2000 and 2017 through federal campaign finance databases, which include contributions to both congressional and presidential candidates as well as party committees.”

The Politics of CEOs, Marginal Revolution, May 7, 2019

“The most Republican-leaning sectors are energy (89.1%), manufacturing, and chemicals.  Business equipment and telecoms are the least-leaning R to D sectors for their CEOs, though still Republican by clear margins.  In the Northeast and West the number of Democratic CEOS has almost caught up to the Republicans.  As for female CEOs, they lean Republican 34.3% to Democratic 32.3%, a small margin but still more Republican donors. That is all from a new paper The Politics of CEOs, by Alma Cohen, Moshe Hazan, Roberto Tallarita, and David Weiss, NBER link here.”

Climate Changes as Firms Heed Investors on Social Issues, WSJ, May 1, 2019

“The Center for Political Accountability’s push for better political-spending disclosure started in 2003. Proposals to improve political-spending transparency made up the biggest single category of shareholder proposals among S&P 500 companies from 2005 through 2018, partly prompted by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that ended longstanding limits on corporate political spending. Such proposals accounted for 626 of 5,092 in all, according to an analysis by researchers at Harvard and Tel Aviv universities.”

DealBook Briefing: Everything You Need to Know About the Pinterest I.P.O., NYT, April 14, 2019

“But the practice is increasingly controversial among governance experts. And Kobi Kastiel and Lucian Bebchuk from Harvard Law School have warned that the dual-class structure may ‘significantly decrease the economic value of Pinterest’s low-voting shares.'”

Harvard Researchers: Lyft Investors Will Regret Dual-Class Structure, Business Insider April 6, 2019 

“In a post published Wednesday, Harvard Law School’s Lucian Bebchuk and Kobi Kastiel argue that Lyft’s corporate governance structure “can be expected” to decrease Lyft’s per-share value in the future, and increase the discount at which Lyft’s low-voting shares trade.”

First of its Kind Study Shows CEO Political Donations Favor GOP, Axios, March 31, 2019

“A new, first of its kind study tracks the political leanings of CEOs by examining 18 years of political contributions by more than 3,800 CEOs of S&P 1500 companies. … Harvard Law School’s Alma Cohen and Roberto Tallarita and Tel-Aviv University’s Moshe Hazan and David Weiss analyzed the political contributions to candidates, committees, and parties from 3,810 individuals who served as CEOs of companies in the S&P 1500 index between 2000 and 2017.”

Mutual Fund Managers Try a New Role: Activist Investor, WSJ, December 30, 2018

“Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard Law School professor, said it is still rare for a traditional manager to be openly critical of companies. “Like index funds, most of the major mutual fund families that focus on active funds display a deferential attitude toward corporate managers in their stewardship choices and activities,” he said.”

Independent Ground-Breaking Research Shows Strong Return on Investment for Whistleblower Hotline Use, AP, November 1, 2018

“Other findings show that the absence of hotline activity was associated with suspect corporate governance or financial reporting practices. Companies with lower levels of hotline activity rated poorly on the Bebchuk Entrenchment Index, which reflects governance practices such as staggered boards, limited shareholder rights, and golden parachute payments for senior executives — all of which correlate to lower firm valuations.”

Containing CEO Pay: Shareholders are Allies, The Center for Economic and Policy Research, October 22, 2018

“There is considerable research showing that CEOs are not worth their pay, much of which is cited in Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried’s excellent book, Pay Without Performance. There are any number of studies showing, for example, that CEOs get richly rewarded for events they had nothing to do with, like higher profits at an oil company due to a jump in world oil prices.”

Bankers’ Liability and Risk Taking, VoxEU, October 6, 2018

“Bebchuk et al. (2010) calculate that, in 2000, Fuld owned about $200 million of Lehman Brother stock, which would eventually become worthless. Nevertheless, Fuld withdrew about $520 million from the bank between 2000 and 2008 in the form of cash bonuses and equity sales, none of which was accessible to Lehman’s creditors.”

Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit, New York Times,October 2, 2018 

“Adding two independent directors can be expected to help, but its impact is likely to be limited,” Professor Bebchuk said. “As courts and governance researchers have long recognized, the presence of a dominant shareholder is likely to reduce the effectiveness of independent directors as overseers of the C.E.O.’s decisions and behavior.”

MySay: Greater Pay Transparency Needed at GLCs and GLICs to Improve Governance, The Edge Markets, August 28, 2018

“This proposition views fixed pay, such as salary, as a source of “rent” which may be practically deemed as risk-free pay (that is, taking on additional effort or legitimate risk is not necessary to earn this pay). The inefficient pay hypothesis is consistent with the scholarly thought of Professor Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School who viewed certain pay as “stealth compensation” or “agency costs”.”

Absolute Power Disrupts Absolutely in Silicon Valley, Bloomberg, May 29, 2018

“This idea is a favorite of corporate governance advocates including Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School, and a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission recently advocated for dual-class shares to expire after a period of time. The theory is that the executives of young companies can have more authority over a company when it’s still young, but built-in defenses should fall away as it matures and strengthens.”

A Battle for Control of CBS, With Far-Reaching Consequences, New York Times, May 17, 2018

“The Harvard Law School professor Lucian A. Bebchuk used the Redstone example in an argument that dual-share class structures typically outlive their utility, and should be phased out by a company at some point. “

Gender Pay Gap? Maybe Not in the Corner Office, a Study Shows, New York Times, April 23, 2018

“We controlled for several possible confounding factors,” the authors wrote in a post on the website of Harvard Law School’s Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation. Those factors included the chief executives’ tenure, characteristics of the firms (size, performance and risk), and the size and independence of the boards.

CII Conference Panelists Dish on Corporate Culture, Voting Structures, Pensions & Investments, March 16, 2018

“On a March 13 panel weighing the pros and cons of sunset provisions on companies with unequal voting structures, Lucian Bebchuk, professor of law, economics and finance, and director of corporate governance at Harvard Law School, argued that the potential benefits of a dual-class structure tend to diminish over time and that the structure should not be maintained indefinitely.”

DealBook Briefing: We Still Have Questions About Wynn Resorts’ Board, New York Times, February 2, 2018

“In an email exchange with me, Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard law professor and an expert in corporate governance, asked why the board did not suspend Mr. Wynn from his position pending the investigation, or demand that he not interact with Wynn Resorts employees, a step that would have limited his ability to influence the board investigation.”

Control Freaks, Reuters, December 21, 2017

“Activists’ bargaining power at companies with controlling shareholders is not always as limited as it appears, according to a 2016 paper by Kobi Kastiel, a fellow at Harvard Law School. Forces that facilitate activism include the right to nominate directors, the right to veto going-private transactions, and the use of litigation to put pressure on those in control, Kastiel concludes.”

In a Jam with Activist Investors, Campaign Live, November 2, 2017

“Nor are activists without independent defenders. Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard professor whose research has unearthed the virtues of activist campaigns, concluded in a 2015 paper that we ‘should not accept the validity of the frequent assertions that activist interventions are costly to firms and their shareholders in the long term’.”

Vanguard’s Genocide Problem, Barron’s, October 28, 2017 

“This meeting and this resolution comes at a unique moment,” said Stephen Davis, associate director of Harvard Law School’s Programs on Corporate Governance and Institutional Investors. Vanguard and its competitors “have really begun to take environmental, social, and governance issues seriously as investment risks.”

Hedge Fund Activism: The Facts Don’t Bear Out the Dire Warnings, AllAboutAlpha, September 24, 2017

Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law, has been at the heart of scholarly arguments over corporate governance for a long time, perhaps since 1990, the year he edited a textbook on Corporate Law and Economic Analysis. That was also the year Bebchuk, along with Marcel Kahan, authored a seminal article on “legal policy toward proxy contests.” They argued that ‘companies should be free to adopt rules more favorable to challengers, and less favorable to incumbents, than the standard proxy rules; however, companies should be restrained from opting for rules favoring incumbents over challengers.'”

Wells Fargo Holders Expected to Re-Elect Board, Send Message, Fox Business, April 25, 2017

“The outcome is a wake-up call that directors at U.S. companies may no longer glide through a crisis without taking individual hits in reputation,” said Stephen Davis, associate director of Harvard Law School’s Programs on Corporate Governance and Institutional Investors. “Institutional investors are staffing up for regular, tougher scrutiny of directors.”

U.S. Mutual Fund Trustees Feel the Heat of Investor Lawsuits, Reuters, December 27, 2016

A common concern is that the boards are more focused on following technical rules than looking out for shareholder interests, said Stephen Davis, a senior fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance.

Wells Fargo Scandal Shows Need to Fix Performance Pay Loophole, The Hill, October 6, 2016

According to Harvard Law’s Lucien Bebchuk and colleagues, about 12 percent of firms—or 2,000 in total—backdated CEO stocks from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, which boosted executive compensation by 20 percent.

 Activists at the Gate, CFO Magazine, March 17, 2016

Despite claims that activist investors are “pumping and dumping,” a recent study of activist interventions between 1994 and 2007 by Harvard Law School professor Lucian Bebchuk and others found that Tobin’s Q and return on assets were consistently higher three, four, and five years following the interventions.

CEO Dauman takes over chair at Viacom, replacing Redstone, AP, February 4, 2016

Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard law professor and director of its program on corporate governance, said the board conflict highlights the problems of companies with two classes of stock—one set that holds voting power, and another that does not. He said in an email that Viacom’s corporate structure is now “highly problematic and fraught with risks for public investors.”

Some Companies Balk at Disclosing Details of Political Giving, Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2015

Between 2011 to 2014, a group at Harvard University led by professor Lucian Bebchuk campaigned to get more than 100 major companies to put their entire boards up for annual election, instead of staggering directors in multiyear terms.

Hindering the S.E.C. From Shining a Light on Political Spending, New York Times DealBook, December 21, 2015

The omnibus budget agreement adopted by Congress includes a provision that prevents the Securities and Exchange Commission from issuing a rule next year that would require public companies to disclose their political spending. […] In July 2011 we [Lucian A. Bebchuk and Robert J. Jackson Jr.] were co-chairmen of a bipartisan committee of 10 corporate and securities law professors that considered this issue and submitted a rule-making petition to the S.E.C. The petition urged the agency to develop rules requiring public companies to disclose their spending on politics.

The Examiners: Insider Pay Disclosures Can Spark Troubling Unintended Consequences, Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2015

Whatever the merits of the disclosure debate may be, the debate is swept up in the larger controversy surrounding executive pay faced by healthy and distressed businesses alike. For example, in their controversial treatise on the unfulfilled promise of executive compensation, Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried weave a detailed account of how structural flaws in corporate governance have enabled managers to influence their own pay and have produced widespread distortions in pay arrangements. They believe that directors must focus on shareholder interests and operate independently from the executives whose compensation they set by making directors more directly accountable to shareholders.

Members of Congress Ask SEC to Divulge Corporate Political Spending, Corporate Counsel, October 28, 2015

Some 58 members of the House of Representatives this week sent a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission supporting a mandate for corporations to disclose their political spending to investors, hoping to get the agency to reconsider a rule-making petition. […] The representatives join 44 U.S. senators who sent White a similar letter in August supporting the rule-making petition submitted by a committee chaired by law professors Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard and Robert Jackson Jr. of Columbia.

The Case For and Against Activist Hedge Funds, ValueWalk, October 20, 2015

Activist hedge funds can count on a number of supporters in academia and in the media rising up in defense of their actions. No doubt activist hedge funds have found their most persistent academic supporters in Professor Lucian Bebchuk of the Harvard Law School and his co-authors. In several papers, but most particularly in the Bebchuk, Brav and Jiang (2013) paper, the authors make several claims, which are summarized in Bebchuk’s op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal: […]

Some Companies Balk at Disclosing Details of Political Giving, Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2015

Shareholders are hitting a wall with some major companies in their effort to persuade them to disclose how they spend corporate money to support political candidates. According to the Center for Political Accountability, at least one in 10 big publicly traded companies doesn’t reveal details of its donations to electoral candidates, parties or causes on its website, where investors could easily find it…Many investors want to know how and where companies put corporate funds to work, said Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School. “Without disclosure and accountability, companies may well spend funds on political causes that insiders favor but shareholders do not.”

Early Trading and Tax Hints, BloombergView, September 15, 2015

Elsewhere in insider trading, “Insiders Beat Market Before Event Disclosure: Study.” The study is by Alma Cohen of Harvard and Rob Jackson and Joshua Mitts of Columbia.

‘Trading the gap’ give insiders a big advantage in stock trades. And it’s perfectly legal. The Washington Post, September 15, 2015

Stock markets today move by the microsecond. Fortunes are made and lost in the blink of an eye. Yet public companies are still allowed to wait four business days before announcing a major merger, bankruptcy, layoff or a new CEO. That kind of news can send share prices soaring or crashing. And a potential 96-hour delay in revealing those events translates into an eon by the clock that runs modern markets…It’s called “trading the gap.” And in the last six years, corporate insiders have earned $105 million in above-market profits by doing it, researchers found. It’s not illegal. But the findings raise questions about whether this was the intended effect of financial regulations, write study authors Alma Cohen of Harvard Law and Robert J. Jackson, Jr. and Joshua R. Mitts at Columbia Law.

Insiders Beat Market Before Event Disclosure: Study, Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2015

Corporate executives and board members regularly make market-beating returns from buying and selling their companies’ stock in the days before disclosing a significant event, according to a study that says it has found a link between insider knowledge and investment profits. Researchers at Columbia and Harvard universities analyzed 42,820 insider purchases and sales reported by companies between 2004 and 2014. The findings wade into a long-running debate over whether U.S. securities laws, many of them decades old, can effectively police a trading market that has grown ever faster and more complex. Critics say the lag time allowed by current disclosure rules is a relic of an era before electronic filings and is ripe for abuse. “To leave open a gap like that is an invitation to insider trading,” said Robert Jackson, a Columbia Law School professor who co-wrote the study with his colleague Joshua Mitts and Alma Cohen of Harvard.

CalSTRS Explains Sponsorship of Declassification Proposal at the 2015 Perry Ellis Annual Shareholders Meeting, MarketWatch, July 6, 2015

A staggered board has been found to be one of six entrenching mechanisms that negatively correlate with company performance, as referenced in “What Matters in Corporate Governance?” by Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen & Allen Ferrell, Harvard Law School, Discussion Paper No. 491 (09/2004, revised 04/2009).

Top US bank executives abandon share sale taboo, Financial Times, June 16, 2015

However, Lucian Bebchuk, director of the corporate governance programme at Harvard Law School and a former adviser to the US government’s “pay tsar”, argued there should be tighter restrictions on the amount of annual selling by executives. “When bank executives have substantial freedom to unload equity incentives given to them as part of their compensation, and when executives can be expected to make significant use of their freedom to unload such equity incentives, the executives’ pay arrangements produce distorted incentives to engage in excessive risk-taking,” he said. “Providing bank executives with desirable risk-taking incentives requires precluding them, as long as they lead their bank, from unloading a significant fraction of their holdings in any given year.”

How Wall Street Enabled A Controversial Power Grab At A Wannabe Berkshire Hathaway, Forbes, June 14, 2015

“The tender offer is an aggressive entrenchment move aimed at enabling the CEO to use the shareholders’ money to gain control over the company,” says Lucian Bebchuck, director of the program on corporate governance at Harvard Law School. “Given that the CEO’s management and performance has been controversial, it is especially important for this company’s shareholders to retain the power to vote for a change of control. Unfortunately, if the tender offer is successful, the CEO would become fully entrenched,” he adds.

Former Commissioners Slam SEC for Inaction on Political Spending Rule, Compliance Week, May 27, 2015

The push for political spending disclosures initiated with a Petition for Rulemaking filed by a team of 10 prominent law professors. Robert Jackson, an associate professor at Columbia Law School, and Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk spearheaded the effort in 2011.

Wall Street will always crush the little guy, but the stock market could be fairer, MarketWatch, May 21, 2015

A paper by Harvard Law School professor Lucian Bebchuk found that CEOs who earn more than the average “pay slice” of 35% of a firm’s total compensation for its top five executives significantly underperform their peers. That is because such companies make poor acquisition decisions, reward their CEOs for “luck” when industry conditions improve, fail to hold CEOs accountable for poor performance, and grant options that are timed “opportunistically,” Bebchuk found.

Mylan created Dutch-style poison pill to protect itself, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 2, 2015

Harvard law professor Lucian Bebchuk opposes the use of the Dutch poison pill. “The shareholders of a company should be able to decide whether to sell the company, and giving the board of a Dutch foundation effective veto power over an acquisition is detrimental to the interests of shareholders,” he said in an email.

Wall Street Executives from the Financial Crisis of 2008: Where Are They Now?, Vanity Fair, March 19, 2015

[Former Lehman Brothers C.E.O. Dick] Fuld remains fabulously wealthy, although just how wealthy remains a subject of some dispute. During the same October 2008 congressional hearing in which he sparred with Mica and Henry Waxman, the committee chairman, about how much money he had made at Lehman, Waxman released a chart showing that Fuld had been paid $484 million between 2000 and 2007. Under oath, Fuld argued he had received closer to $310 million. Later in the hearing he conceded that it may have been $350 million. A subsequent analysis by Harvard law professor Lucian Bebchuk and colleagues concluded that the figure was $522.7 million; Oliver Budde, formerly a lawyer who worked at Lehman on regulatory matters, has calculated that Fuld made $529.4 million between 2000 and 2007.

Shareholder capitalism on trial, Washington Post, March 19, 2015

Similarly, most executives don’t automatically favor share purchases over hard investment projects, argues Harvard law professor Lucian Bebchuk, an expert on corporations. If they had hard projects that were more profitable than purchasing shares, they would actually do better personally, he says. Firms would become more profitable, so their stock prices and executive compensation would rise even further. What’s happening, Bebchuk says, is that investment funds are being channeled from slow-growing to fast-growing sectors.

The Morning Risk Report: Petrobras Underlines Corruption Risks for Investors, Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2015

Anger over the [Petrobras corruption] revelations sent more than a million Brazilian protesters into the streets last weekend, in a sign that the issues may lead to a broader, more painful reorganization of the firm, said Stephen Davis, an associate director of Harvard Law School’s program on corporate governance. “It has elevated corruption on the risk hierarchy within the investor community,” Mr. Davis said. The case begs the question “if a company is looking the other way or tolerating corruption what else is the company doing that might not be in the shareholders’ interest?”

Activist funds: An investor calls, The Economist, February 7, 2015

A study of activism in 1994-2007 by Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School, and his colleagues, found that activist interventions lead to a sustained, if modest, improvement in operating performance and better shareholder returns. Its period of interest precedes the recent growth in activism, but there is reason to believe that the pattern persists.

An Unusual Boardroom Battle, in Academia, New York Times DealBook, January 5, 2015

At the heart of the dispute is an academic paper written last month by Daniel M. Gallagher, a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Joseph A. Grundfest, a professor at Stanford Law School and himself a former S.E.C. commissioner, that was titled “Did Harvard Violate Federal Securities Law? The Campaign Against Classified Boards of Directors.” The paper took aim at Lucian A. Bebchuk, a Harvard Law School professor who has long researched corporate governance issues and has been an outspoken advocate for increased democracy in corporate America’s boardrooms. Through Harvard’s Shareholder Rights Project, a group he created, Mr. Bebchuk, on behalf of public pension funds, has helped wage proxy contests at 129 companies to change policies that prevent shareholders from electing, or overthrowing, an entire board at once.

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