Corporate Governance Summit 2009

by Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

Dates and Locations

November 12 – 13, 2009
Davidson Conference Center
USC University Park Campus
Los Angeles, California

The Program

As global leaders in business education, the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California has established an annual Corporate Governance Summit featuring thought leaders from industry and academia. USC’s inaugural session took place Spring 2006 and featured outstanding speakers such as Don Nicolaisen, Dennis Beresford, and Sharon Allen.

The topics and issues associated with Corporate Governance are quite dynamic and evolving daily and are prominent subjects in our news. These issues will be addressed, discussed, and debated at the USC Corporate Governance Summit 2009.

USC’s program, teaming with Resources Global Professionals (Resources), will present Corporate Governance practitioners, experts from the USC Marshall School of Business and the Leventhal School of Accounting, and a wide range of speakers and panelists with hands-on experience.

The program is designed to give directors and executives the information they need to meet the challenges of governance today…(continue reading)

Addressing Some Inherent Challenges to Good Corporate Governance

by Prof. N. Balasubrananian, for Odondo Notes, Ocotber 28, 2009.

Are corporations, in general, amenable to good governance? Are there inherent incompatibilities between good governance and the corporate format of organizations? How can these be addressed satisfactorily without over-regulation that might impair entrepreneurial potential? These are some of the nagging issues this paper explores and offers some radical suggestions for consideration…

To read more click here.

Augustana professor lambastes ‘pathetic’ corporate governance

by Jeff Martin, for Argus Leader, Ocotber 28, 2009.

The nation’s financial collapses of the past couple years were caused by several failures, “not one of which has been adequately addressed,” an Augustana College professor told business people Tuesday at the third annual South Dakota Economic Outlook Seminar.

The failures were all hybrid in nature, meaning they involved shortcomings by both the markets and the government, said Robert Wright, Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana.

They included “pathetic” corporate governance which gives common stockholders little say in how publicly traded corporations are run. In some cases, top managers then are able to give themselves huge salaries and retirement packages and other perks, Wright said.

“What has the government done about this deplorable situation? Exactly nothing,” he said.

Credit rating agencies no longer function in the best interest of investors as they once did, he said. Among other failures: The government has adopted the so-called “too big to fail” policy. That is an incentive for the nation’s largest firms to “pursue risk with reckless abandon safe in the knowledge that old Uncle Sam has their back,” Wright said…(continue reading)

Assessing the Chrysler Bankruptcy

by Mark Roe, for The Harvard Law School Forum at Harvard Law School, October 28, 2009.

In a recent working paper Assessing the Chrysler Bankruptcy, which I presented at the Law and Economics seminar here at Harvard Law School, David Skeel and I evaluate the Chrysler bankruptcy. Chrysler entered bankruptcy as a company widely thought to be ripe for liquidation if left on its own, obtained massive funding from the United States Treasury, and exited via a transaction that transferred its auto business and most of its preexisting creditors to a new company principally owned by some of Chrysler’s old creditors.

The transaction proved controversial in capital markets, as some lenders — those left behind with claims on the shell company that had owned the auto business — complained that their entitlement to priority wasn’t honored. Warren Buffett wondered out loud that there would be “a whole lot of consequences” if the transaction was approved, as it was, because it could “disrupt lending practices in the future.”

Our overall conclusions are not favorable to the process and results. The Chrysler bankruptcy process used undesirable mechanisms that federal courts and Congress struggled for decades to suppress at the end of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, ultimately successfully. If the mechanisms are not firmly rejected, either explicitly or via judicial (or legislative) distinction or via a collective forgetting of the event among bankruptcy institutions, then future reorganizations in chapter 11 will be at risk, in ways that could potentially affect capital markets…(continue reading)