Decentralized Finance (“DeFi”) has grown in popularity due to its promise that it will, as its name suggests, disintermediate traditional finance structures. Total Value Locked, which represents all deposits in various DeFi platforms, grew from $1 billion in June 2020 to a peak of almost $200 billion in November 2021. As of April 2023, almost… Read More »
The debate on whether environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting should be mandatory is ongoing and of growing importance for regulators. Different institutions are working on new mandatory ESG disclosures. For example, the European Union passed the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in 2014 and is now preparing to adopt the European Sustainability Reporting Standards… Read More »
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing has been gaining momentum in recent years as investors increasingly recognize the importance of incorporating ESG factors into their investment decisions. ESG investors rely on third party rating agencies that specialize in measuring the ESG performance of companies. There are many ESG rating agencies in the market and some… Read More »
Enacted in October of 2000, Regulation Fair Disclosure (“Reg FD”) was designed to level the informational playing field among investors by ensuring that issuers publicly disclose material information to the entire market and not just to a select few. Specifically, Reg FD requires that if a firm privately discloses material information, they must promptly disseminate… Read More »
In our digital age, cybersecurity plays a crucial role in resolving consumer concerns regarding data breaches. Nevertheless, United States copyright laws prohibit the effective use of cybersecurity tools that disrupt malicious hackers from accessing personal (and sensitive) information. One law that is especially detrimental to defending against malicious attackers is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act… Read More »
Back in 2014, the Hong Kong-based venture capital group Deep Knowledge Ventures announced that it had successfully appointed an algorithm named “VITAL” to its board of directors. This system of artificial intelligence (AI) was purportedly given the right to vote on whether the firm needed to invest in a specific company or not, similar to… Read More »
Over the past few decades, the ownership structure of American firms has undergone a significant transformation. Gone are the days of dispersed ownership, where most firms were owned by thousands of individuals directly investing their savings in the stock exchange. Instead, we now have a complex web of institutional investors and powerful individual or family… Read More »
Decentralized finance (‘DeFi’) through smart contract technology has been touted as a major use case for blockchain technology ever since the launch of the Ethereum blockchain. One area within DeFi that received particular interest from an early stage is secured lending. Yet, in both Commonwealth and UCC jurisdictions, doubts exist over how such assets function… Read More »
The history of lending discrimination is well-documented in the United States, and the federal government employs a variety of legal mechanisms to fight its effects and promote lending equity. One such tool is the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which Congress passed in 1977. The CRA was designed to encourage banks to lend in the geographic… Read More »
Corporate bankruptcy law is a tool to resolve the financial distress of corporations. Unviable corporations are liquidated and the proceeds distributed to the creditors. Viable corporations are restructured and put on a new financial footing. Following the model of Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code, many jurisdictions worldwide have strengthened or introduced such restructuring… Read More »
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