Corporate Governance

Subscribe to Corporate Governance

A federal District Court in Washington recently dismissed a shareholder derivative action by a conservative advocacy group challenging Starbucks’ initiatives relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”). The decision in National Center for Public Policy Research v. Schultz held that the plaintiff did not fairly and adequately represent the interests of Starbucks and its shareholders in launching the challenge and had not pled particularized facts showing that Starbucks’ Board of Directors had wrongfully refused the plaintiff’s demand to dismantle the company’s DEI initiatives.

In an era of politicization of DEI and other ESG-related concerns, the ruling sends a signal that at least some courts will refuse to become “political attachés” in the culture wars and will not involve themselves with partisan attacks on “reasonable and legal decisions made by the board of directors of public corporations.” Decisions of this type should provide some comfort to corporations and boards as they consider how to address those complicated social and workplace issues.

The en banc Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a shareholder derivative action in light of an exclusive-forum bylaw requiring assertion of derivative claims in the Delaware Court of Chancery, even though the plaintiff had pled a federal claim that was subject to exclusive federal jurisdiction and could not have been litigated in the Delaware court. The June 1, 2023 ruling in Lee ex rel. The Gap, Inc. v. Fisher could further encourage the adoption of similar forum-selection provisions and could discourage shareholders’ efforts to circumvent state-forum provisions by filing derivative actions alleging federal-law proxy claims in federal court.

A California federal court held that a California statute requiring California-based corporations to have a minimum number of directors from designated under-represented groups violates the federal Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. The decision in Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment v. Weber (E.D. Cal. May 16, 2023) is one of the latest skirmishes in the culture wars raging around diversity and other ESG-related matters. The ruling addresses the same law that a California state court previously invalidated in a decision that is currently on appeal.

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts U.S., Inc. (“Disney”), the owner and operator of the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, has sued Florida’s Governor and other officials for allegedly launching “a targeted campaign of government retaliation” in response to Disney’s opposition to Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law.  The Complaint in Walt Disney Parks and Resorts U.S., Inc. v. DeSantis et al., highlights one of the most hotly debated topics in the era of competing ESG and anti-ESG sentiments:  to what extent should corporations take public positions on political and social issues that might not directly relate to the companies’ core business operations? Corporate boards of directors should be attuned to and exercise appropriate oversight over these questions, as well as the related issue of corporate political contributions.

On February 23, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed a mid-trial grant of judgment as a matter of law against the Securities and Exchange Commission in a jury trial for insider trading.  The decision in SEC v. Clark is a reminder that the SEC can meet its burden of proof by presenting merely circumstantial, rather than direct, evidence of insider trading and that a trial court must not weigh evidence, determine witnesses’ credibility, or substitute its judgment for the jury’s in deciding whether to grant a motion for judgment as a matter of law.

On January 1, 2021, Congress enacted the Corporate Transparency Act as part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 to “better enable critical national security, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts to counter money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and other illicit activity.” FinCEN issued the final rule on Beneficial Ownership…

In the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrencies, a crypto trader was convicted of insider trading in federal district court and recently sentenced to 10 months in prison.

The defendant, Nikhil Wahi, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to illegally trading on information tipped by his brother, a former Coinbase product manager. According to his plea, Wahi used that information to trade on 40 different kinds of crypto assets were scheduled to be listed on the Coinbase platform between April 2021 and July 2022, when he was arrested. Prosecutors alleged that Wahi used those tips to sell crypto assets for a profit. Under the terms of the plea agreement, Wahi agreed to serve ten months in prison. Wahi’s brother, Ishan Wahi, has pleaded not guilty and is due to appear in court in March.

The Second Circuit held yesterday that a government agency’s nonpublic, pre-decisional regulatory information does not constitute “property” for purposes of the federal insider-trading and wire-fraud statutes.  The decision in United States v. Blaszczak (2d Cir. Dec. 27, 2022) (“Blaszczak II”) effectively vacated convictions under those statutes for defendants who had traded on nonpublic, market-moving information that had been obtained from a government agency.