Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the number of lawsuits on firm performance and in-house legal department size. More importantly, this paper also aims to explore the interaction effect of in-house legal department size on the aforementioned lawsuit-performance relationship.

The empirical analyses are performed by using secondary data. Structural equation modeling is employed in order to examine multiple structural relationships between the number of lawsuits, size of in-house legal department, and firm performance.

Three key findings were generated: number of lawsuits has a significant detrimental effect on firm performance; number of lawsuits is positively associated with size of in-house legal departments; and size of in-house legal departments negatively moderates the relationship between number of lawsuits and firm performance.

The results corroborate the harmfulness of lawsuits. On the one hand, a large number of lawsuits damage the firm’s financial performance directly; on the other hand, more lawsuits lead to enlarged in-house legal departments which further aggravate the negative effects of lawsuits on firm performance. These results suggest that firms should spend more effort in properly managing legal departments.

This paper contributes to the literature by empirically examining the economic impacts of lawsuits on firm performance. Moreover, it also explored the notion that having a large size of in-house legal department does not mitigate, but aggravates the harmfulness of lawsuits on firm performance.

This paper aims to derive the conditions under which a financial services firm will want to hire a compliance services company and show how much money they should spend.

This paper uses a mathematical model to show the intuition behind many of the compliance decisions that cost financial services firms billions every year.

This paper finds that hiring compliance firms may save banks and brokerages money. However, their advice may lead to an embarrass de riches – whereby the lower compliance costs and higher profit advantages they confer may lead to more regulation. Regulators may furthermore tighten regulation – with the expectation that financial service firms will adapt somehow. This paper presents a fresh perspective on the Menon hypothesis, deriving conditions under which financial regulations help the competitiveness of an international financial centre.

The paper represents one of the first and only models of compliance spending by financial services firms.

This paper provides five potential policy responses for dealing with ever ratcheting financial regulations.

The paper hopefully launches literature on the compliance service industry – and the buy-or-do decision to engage in financial services compliance. This paper finds that efficient compliance can hurt firms, by encouraging regulation. This paper shows how firms can forestall the extra regulation that comes with easier internet and computerised monitoring.

The growing use of employee assistance programmes (EAPs) from the US and Britain is reported. There often include employee counselling. Welfare officers, occupational health staff and even managers have been counselling for many years, usually intuitively but increasing demands for higher performance at work, coupled with complex social and personal problems now require more expert counselling. This article assesses which problems are most suited for which types of counsellor, and evaluates the role of counselling within an EAP. Creation of a counselling culture in a firm is related to corporate performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the amendments to the listing standards of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the NASDAQ Stock Market (Nasdaq), which were approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) on January 11, 2013 to implement the SEC's final rules on the independence of compensation committees and their selection of advisors pursuant to Rule 952 of the Dodd‐Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd Frank).

After a summary of notable provisions, the paper explains effective dates and respective Nasdaq and NYSE listing standards pertaining to compensation committee compensation; director independence standards, advisors, and charters; certain exemptions for foreign issuers; exemptions for certain types of companies and partnerships; and recommended next steps for companies that are subject to the amended listing standards.

Over the past few years, the independence of compensation committees and their advisors has been a hot button corporate governance issue. Dodd‐Frank prohibits national securities exchanges from listing any equity security of an issuer that is not in compliance with the exchanges' compensation committee independence and advisor requirements.

The listing standards generally become effective on July 1, 2013; however, listed companies have until the earlier of: their first annual meeting after January 15, 2014; or October 31, 2014, to comply with certain requirements including the independence structure of their compensation committees.

The paper provides practical advice from experienced financial services lawyers.

In China's urban context of labor retrenchment, women are faring poorly relative to their male counterparts. Is the same true in China's incipient, dynamic, and expanding legal profession? Findings from four sources of quantitative data suggest that gender inequality in China's private and highly market-driven legal profession is a microcosm of larger patterns of female disadvantage in China's evolving urban labor market. Although employment opportunities for women lawyers have greatly expanded quantitatively, their careers are qualitatively less successful than those of their male counterparts in terms of both income and partnership status. In the Chinese bar, women's significantly shorter career trajectories are perhaps the most important cause of their lower incomes and slimmer chances of becoming a law firm partner. Future research must identify the causes of this significant career longevity gap between men and women in the Chinese legal profession.

The aim of this paper is to provide hedge fund and other private fund managers with a brief recap of regulatory changes in 2010 and a reminder of certain “best practices” they should consider as they prepare for 2011.

The paper provides 2010 regulatory highlights, including relevant provisions of the Dodd‐Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Pay‐to‐Play Rule, and amendments to Form ADV. It outlines issues for consideration in 2011, including preparation for SEC registration (if applicable), review of compliance policies and procedures, updating Form ADV, Form D and Blue Sky Filings, “custody rule” (Rule 206(4)‐2 under the Advisers Act) compliance, other regulatory filings that may be required (including Form 13F, Schedule 13D/13G, and Forms 3, 4, and 5), CFTC regulatory requirements for investment managers who trade or advise others on trading commodity futures contracts, certain tax considerations (including foreign bank, brokerage and other financial account (FBAR) reporting requirements), the Foreign Tax Compliance Act of 2009 (FACTA)), ERISA and Department of Labor considerations, fee deferral arrangements, and offering document updates.

This summary is not intended to provide a complete list of an investment manager's obligations relating to its compliance with applicable rules and regulations or to serve as legal advice. It does not address any non‐US or state law requirements and has not been tailored to the specific needs of a particular investment manager's business.

This paper provides useful summary practical guidance from experienced financial institutions lawyers.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate in‐house counsel's dual role in the context of a wrongful discharge claim against his corporate employer and its effect on privileged corporate communications.

The paper takes the form of legal research and analysis.

A multipart factors test is proposed focusing on three areas: first, rationale for discharge; second, in‐house counsel's claim; and third, risks to privileged corporate information.

The paper creates new means to evaluate corporate privilege and in‐house counsel access.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants of arbitrator acceptability and investigate whether the perceived costs of arbitration moderate the relationship between arbitrator acceptability and arbitrator characteristics in international commercial arbitration.

A two-stage analytic process is used to test the dimensionality, reliability and validity of each construct and then the proposed hypotheses.

The findings show that the five constructs of arbitrator characteristics – reputation, practical expertise, legal expertise, experience and procedural justice – statistically significantly explain arbitrator acceptability. Moreover, perceived cost of arbitration moderates the relationship between arbitrator acceptability and arbitrator characteristics. However, the moderating effect of perceived costs of arbitration is not equal across characteristics.

Knowledge regarding potential moderators of the strength of the indicators of arbitrator acceptability will be useful to future researchers in determining which variables to study in arbitrator selection research.

Useful guidelines in the selection of an international arbitrator are proposed.

This study contributes to arbitrator acceptability literature through the suggestion of a hypothesized model of arbitrator acceptability with auxiliary hypothesis of reputation in international contexts. In addition, this study investigates the moderating role of perceived cost of arbitration on the relationship between arbitrator acceptability and arbitrator characteristics.

Using career construction theory, the authors empirically examine the mechanism by which career adaptability promotes employee subjective career success (career satisfaction and career commitment) through job crafting.

A moderated mediation model is tested using survey data from 324 full-time business professionals in France. Hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

he authors found that job crafting mediated the relationship between career adaptability and subjective career success (career satisfaction and career commitment). The positive effect of career adaptability on job crafting was greater under higher levels of lone wolf personality and positive perfectionism, as was the indirect effect of career adaptability on subjective career success via job crafting.

data are cross-sectional in nature. Robust theoretical contentions and affective means of identifying common method variance (CMV) are addressed and evaluated.

High levels of career adaptability may be a useful strategy for promoting employee job crafting and subjective career success. In addition, individuals with lone wolf personality and positive perfectionism should be given opportunities to craft their jobs in the workplace.

This research confirms a moderated mediation model positioning job crafting as a mediator of career adaptability's effects on employee subjective career success and lone wolf and positive perfectionism as moderators of such effects. This study suggests that job crafting and career-focused personality traits are important factors that influence the relationship between career adaptability and subjective career success.

The authors wanted to find out if women in-house lawyers were treated more equitably than their counterparts in law firms and, therefore, reached higher ranks more often.

The authors examined 10 years of data about public companies in the ExecuComp dataset. The information includes name, age, gender, job category and numerous compensation measures. Public companies must report their top five earners. The authors narrowed their focus to 2,154 lawyers of whom 1,851 were men and 303 were women.

Analysis supported hypothesis 1, showing women are underrepresented in senior legal roles in large corporations. Hypothesis 2, however, was not supported. It was expected that women would be more likely to hold senior positions in female-dominated industries, but this was not the case. Finally, hypothesis 3 was not supported either. It suggested in-house women counsel would earn comparable compensation to their male counterparts. But analysis showed women earned 92.6pc of men earn and their bonuses were only 73.2pc of men’s.

The authors say the research has important practical lessons for companies. Many of the remedies for gender disparities in law firms apply also to in-house counsel, they say. A primary mechanism is to integrate more women into senior leadership positions. This will tend to lead to reductions in compensation disparities, as well as greater accountability and transparency.