Stephen Bainbridge | |
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Born | 1958 (age 65–66) Doylestown, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
Education | Western Maryland College (BA) University of Virginia (MS, JD) |
Occupation(s) | William D. Warren Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles |
Stephen Bainbridge (born 1958) is an American legal scholar. He is the William D. Warren Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, where he teaches courses on corporations and business law.
Bainbridge graduated with an A.B. from Western Maryland College, 1980; a Master of Science in chemistry, University of Virginia, 1983; and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law, 1985. Bainbridge has been a law professor at UCLA since 1997.
Bainbridge has written numerous law review articles and books, with a strong emphasis on the law and economics of public corporations. He is a leading advocate of Director Primacy in corporate governance, and has written numerous law review articles on the subject.
In 2008, Bainbridge received the UCLA School of Law's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching. [1] In 2008, Directorship Magazine named Bainbridge one of the 100 most influential people in the field of corporate governance. [2]
Bainbridge had donated consistently to Republican political candidates including a donation of $2,700 (the maximum allowed by law) to Donald Trump, but in 2020 he donated to the American Solidarity Party as well. [3] He has since joined the American Solidarity Party. [4] [5]
Director primacy is a theory of the firm that was introduced by Bainbridge in an article in Northwestern University Law Review in 2003 (Vol 97 No 2). He argues that traditional firm theory is based on a false premise that the board's authority derives from the owners. He argues that while the board is appointed by the owners, the nature of the appointment is one in which the power to be exercised is not under the control of the appointing members. Once appointed then, directors are almost unfettered in their exercise of their powers. However, they are subject to overarching fiduciary responsibility which aligns their required actions with a shareholder wealth maximization principle.
Corporate governance are mechanisms, processes and relations by which corporations are controlled and operated ("governed").
Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 204 Mich 459; 170 NW 668 (1919), is a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a manner for the benefit of his employees or customers. It is often taught as affirming the principle of "shareholder primacy" in corporate America, although that teaching has received some criticism. At the same time, the case affirmed the business judgment rule, leaving Ford an extremely wide latitude about how to run the company.
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The Friedman doctrine, also called shareholder theory, is a normative theory of business ethics advanced by economist Milton Friedman which holds that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. This shareholder primacy approach views shareholders as the economic engine of the organization and the only group to which the firm is socially responsible. As such, the goal of the firm is to increase its profits and maximize returns to shareholders. Friedman argues that the shareholders can then decide for themselves what social initiatives to take part in, rather than have an executive whom the shareholders appointed explicitly for business purposes decide such matters for them.
Shareholder primacy is a theory in corporate governance holding that shareholder interests should be assigned first priority relative to all other corporate stakeholders. A shareholder primacy approach often gives shareholders power to intercede directly and frequently in corporate decision-making, through such means as unilateral shareholder power to amend corporate charters, shareholder referendums on business decisions and regular corporate board election contests. The shareholder primacy norm was first used by courts to resolve disputes among majority and minority shareholders, and, over time, this use of the shareholder primacy norm evolved into the modern doctrine of minority shareholder oppression.
Lynn Andrea Stout was an American corporate law scholar. She was a Distinguished Professor of Corporate & Business Law at the Cornell Law School and, before that, the Paul Hastings Professor of Corporate and Securities Law at UCLA Law School. She specialized in researching, writing about, lecturing on, and teaching corporate law, securities and derivatives regulation, law and economics, business ethics, and prosocial behavior in relation to the law. She died on April 16, 2018, at the age of 60 following a long struggle with cancer.
Francis "Frank" Herbert Buckley is a foundation professor at George Mason University School of Law where he has taught since 1989. Before then he was a visiting Olin fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. He has also taught at Panthéon-Assas University, Sciences Po in Paris and the McGill Faculty of Law in Montreal. He practiced law for three years in Toronto.
Kent Greenfield is an American lawyer, Professor of Law and Law Fund Research Scholar at Boston College, and frequent commentator to The Huffington Post. He is the author of The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits and The Failure of Corporate Law: Fundamental Flaws and Progressive Possibilities, published by University of Chicago Press in 2006, and scholarly articles. He is best known for his "stakeholder" critique of the conventional legal doctrine and theory of corporate law, and for his leadership in a legal battle between law schools and the Pentagon over free speech and gay rights.
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Fund governance refers to a system of checks and balances and work performed by the governing body (board) of an investment fund to ensure that the fund is operated not only in accordance with law, but also in the best interests of the fund and its investors. The objective of fund governance is to uphold the regulatory principles commonly known as the four pillars of investor protection that are typically promulgated through the investment fund regulation applicable in the jurisdiction of the fund. These principles vary by jurisdiction and in the US, the 1940 Act generally ensure that: (i) The investment fund will be managed in accordance with the fund's investment objectives, (ii) The assets of the investment fund will be kept safe, (iii) When investors redeem they will get their pro rata share of the investment fund's assets, (iv) The investment fund will be managed for the benefit of the fund's shareholders and not its service providers.
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