News
Robert Bartlett's article, “Making Banks Transparent” (65 Vand. L. Rev. 293-386), has been included in this year’s list of the Ten Best Corporate and Securities Articles. The list is selected by an annual poll of corporate and securities law academics from a field of more than 550 articles published and indexed in legal journals during 2012. The entire list is available here.
April 24, 2013. Justin McCrary will discuss the economics of safety and policing at Councilmember Schaaf’s Safe Oakland Speaker Series. McCrary will share findings from his recent study, “The Effect of Police on Crime: New Evidence from U.S. Cities, 1960-2010,” including a cost-benefits analysis of policing.
The Inspector General criticized the lack of public education about the IRS’s plans to garnish tax refunds for taxpayers who don’t purchase health insurance under the new Federal Affordable Care Act beginning in 2014.David Gamage weighs in>
April 16, 2013. Robert Bartlett participated in The JOBS Act: First Year Report Card. This roundtable, hosted by Nixon Peabody in San Francisco, discussed key points such as the effectiveness of the JOBS Act from legal, accounting, and investor perspectives.
Applications for the Business Law Certificate are due April 15, 2013 if students wish to be acknowledged in the graduation material and at the Certificate Ceremony event scheduled for May 9th from 3:30 to 5pm. Click here for more information and submission instructions.
April 11, 2013. Berkeley Law Chris Hammond '15 and Will Schildknecht '15 won the 2013 Halloum Negotiation Competition. The competition pairs teams to negotiate hypothetical M&A, financing, and technology licensing transactions. Teams are scored on their preparation, strategy and the outcome. The winners outlasted 48 other competitors to take home the championship and accompanying iPad minis. A big thank you to Skadden and Gibson Dunn, which sponsored the two week long competition.
Eric Talley comments on HP's governance changes to avoid another failed acquisition like Autonomy. Shareholder outreach is among the deputy GC's new responsibilities at HP. Read more>
The America Invents Act of 2011 (AIA) made extensive changes to U.S. patent law. Perhaps the most significant change goes into effect March 16, 2013 when the US changes from the current "first-to-invent" system to the more widely followed "first-to-file" (i.e., first-inventor-to-file) system. Eric Talley discusses the implications for the historic shift in US patent law onKPCC.org. Listen>
Thomas Brown, lecturer at UC Berkeley Law School and partner at Paul Hastings, has submitted a paper to the California State Assembly Banking and Finance Committee. The paper discusses the California Money Transmission Act and its effect on innovation in the payments industry. This includes background on the role that California has played in incubating new technologies for value exchange, the regulatory framework that governs the payment industry, issues that have arisen since the CMTA was last amended, and concludes with some thoughts about possible modifications to the CMTA that would address these issues.
Eric Talley recently joined a panel discussion on AirTalk (KPCC.org) on the implications for corporate governance of shareholder activism. This comes as Apple, PNC Financial Services Group and gun manufactures are each under pressure from activist investors. The panel examines the strategies of all the stakeholders and the history of investor activism. How do shareholder rights coexist or conflict with corporate interests? Should corporate governance be “shareholder-centric” or “board-centric?” Do these new tactics improve the bottom line? Listen to Talley's take.
Regarding tax fraud and identity theft in the Bay Area, David Gamage notes that it is "a risk of the technology age." Read more>
Energy Efficiency Retrofits for U.S. Housing: Removing the Bottlenecks, co-authored by Dwight Jaffee, Nancy Wallace, Ashok Bardhan, and Cynthia Kroll, evaluates the alternative mechanisms that could expedite energy efficiency retrofits for US housing. The paper considers the bottlenecks that hamper energy-saving investments for the residential sector, evaluates the state of the art with respect to scoring and assessment tools for energy saving investments and the On-Bill and PACE programs to facilitate secured loans, and it concludes with a series of proposals to overcome the bottlenecks. Read more>
Berkeley Law Negotiation Team Wins Top Award at Ninth Circuit Bankruptcy Competition. Third-year Berkeley Law students Yulia Buyanin, Cristiana Blauth Oliveira, and Charles Rogerson won top writing honors at the American College of Bankruptcy’s inaugural Ninth Circuit Negotiation Competition. Coached by attorney Suzzanne Uhland, they competed in mock negotiations involving a winery’s debt restructuring. The Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy sponsored the team. The competition was held on the USC campus in Los Angeles, and involved 12 teams from major Western law schools as well as a panel of bankruptcy judges. The event had two components: the preparation of a written term sheet, and a live mock negotiation, both of which pertained to a debt restructuring for a financially distressed winery. The Berkeley Law team's hard work and preparation were amply rewarded, garnering them First Place in the written component of the competition ("Best Term Sheet"). Congrats to Yulia, Cristiana, and Charles. Particular thanks and congratulations go out to Suzzanne Uhland (O'Melveny & Myers), who was invaluable as the team's coach, working with them and challenging them throughout the process.
January 16, 2013. The Oakland Tribune. Prasad Krishnamurthy calls on Feds to restructure underwater mortgages by writing off debt in exchange for equity. Read more>
Stavros Gadinis’ latest article, “From Independence to Politics in Financial Regulation,” is forthcoming in the California Law Review. Gadinis’ work focuses on the intersections between finance and government regulation. This paper takes a global look at how governments reformed their “independent” financial regulatory agencies by making them more politically accountable after the 2007-08 financial crisis. Read more>
