Bite-Sized Business Law
Looking for the latest in legal business news?
Get a breakdown of the top stories in business law from industry leaders on the front lines with Bite-Sized Business Law. Host Amy Martella takes a closer look at the latest corporate happenings through interviews with the attorneys, legal experts, public figures, and scholars behind the news to distill business law’s biggest stories into bite-sized portions.
This is your chance to go further into the world of business law and stay up to date with legal cases and industry trends.
Corporations impact us all, leading changes that extend far beyond business to shape the economy, public policy, technology, and beyond. Looking at the big picture, Amy discusses not only the underlying issues in business ethics and legal cases leading the biggest stories but also sparks thought-provoking discussions on where the law should be headed.
Amy is the Executive Director of the Corporate Law Center at Fordham University School of Law. Her background ranges from big law to government to tech startups, allowing her to offer an insider’s perspective of the issues that shape corporate actions, large and small. Covering crypto regulation to securities fraud, AI’s impact to Elon Musk’s pay package, Bite-Sized Business Law covers it all with guests of varying viewpoints to provide the nuanced analysis needed to tackle complex problems.
Whether you're looking for the latest in legal insight on intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions, business ethics or legal cases in the business law world, you’ll find it here. Enjoying a thoughtful perspective on the news stories of the moment, Bite-Sized Business Law examines big issues and delivers them in small doses.
Bite-Sized Business Law is a project by the Corporate Law Center at Fordham Law. The Center serves as a hub for scholars, professionals, policymakers, and students to engage in the study, discussion, and debate of current issues in corporate law. The Center focuses on aspects of corporate law, corporate compliance, antitrust law, and securities regulation. Through initiatives like the Mergers and Acquisitions seminar and the Securities Litigation and Arbitration Clinic, students actively engage in real-world research and cases, bridging the gap between classroom learning and practical application in the legal field.
Bite-Sized Business Law
James Park on the Valuation Treadmill
It seems that the very purpose of a corporation, to make money over the long run, has been dashed by incentives to perform quarter after quarter. As the American attention span diminishes while our hunger for instant gratification and constant growth intensifies, how should the law evolve? How should corporations adapt? What is the SEC’s role in reigning it all in? During this episode, we are joined by UCLA Law Professor James Park, a leading expert in securities regulation, public companies, and securities fraud. Join us as we discuss his book, The Valuation Treadmill which delves into familiar case studies, including Xerox, Penn Central, and Apple, to consider how the constant pressure to meet projections causes public companies to commit securities fraud. Touching on the PSLRA, Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, and the concept of real earnings management, we discuss the pressure public companies face to meet earnings projections and the lengths to which they’ll go to keep pace with such projections. Is valuation pressure inevitable in our economy or are there ways around it? Hear James’s ideas, learn more about what drives certain companies to commit securities fraud, and decide whether there’s a way off of this treadmill.
Key Points From This Episode:
•The shift that has occurred in keeping with the reduced American attention span.
•Introducing guest James Park, professor, author, and expert.
•His definition of the Valuation Treadmill.
•The utility of forecasting and the related dark side.
•Xerox as a case study.
•Penn Central and the surrounding scandal that caused us to lose faith in managers.
•How the story of Apple’s early products demonstrates the necessity of understanding the risk of investing in tech.
•The PSLRA passed in 1995 and how it offers protection for projections.
•Considering criticisms of the PSLRA and to what extent it was successful.
•Where Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank fit into this conversation.
•The method of real earnings management.
•Why there are bigger losses at stake when misrepresenting the numbers.
•Finding better ways to embrace disclosure.
•The impact executive compensation packages have on securities fraud.
•James’s suggestion that proving a motive is sufficient and why it is controversial.
•Why the duty disclose is only going to get stronger.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: