http://blogs.law.widener.edu/delcorp

Events

Each year the Widener Institute of Delaware Corporate and Business Law hosts or co-hosts a number of events which focus on current corporate and business law topics. This year, the institute will be involved in the following events: 

  • Distinguished Scholar in Residence Lectures
  • Francis G. Pileggi Distinguished Lecture In Law
  • Visiting Scholar in Residence Lecture
  • Ruby R. Vale Interschool Corporate Moot Court Competition

 

 5th Annual Distinguished Scholar in Residence Lecture

  • Title: Improving Financial Stability
    Dr. William Poole

    Dr. William Poole

  • Speaker: Dr. William Poole
  • Location: Widener University School of Law,
    Delaware campus, Room TBD
  • Date & Time: Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 5:00 pm

Dr. William Poole is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Currently, Dr. Poole serves as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, Senior Advisor to Merk Investments, and the Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the University of Delaware.

His lecture will comment on the current Treasury and Federal Reserve and their need for a vision for the future.  Dr. Poole plans to give his views on what that vision ought to be.

The 30 to 40 minute lecture will be followed by a Question and Answer period. All who are interested are welcome to attend.

 

25th Annual Francis G. Pileggi Distinguished Lecture In Law

  • Title: When the Government is the Controlling Shareholder:
    Prof. Edward Rock

    Prof. Edward Rock

    Implications for Delaware  

  • Speaker: Professor Edward Rock
  • Location: Hotel DuPont
  • Date & Time: Friday, October 9, 2009 at 8:00 am

This lecture series, co-hosted with the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law,  focuses on developing issues in the area of corporate law.  It also provides the Delaware Bar, particularly the members of the bench, an opportunity to challenge the academia with practical concerns.

 This Year’s Topic

This year, Professor Rock will examine Delaware’s place in a new legal landscape where, as a result of the bailouts that began last fall, the government now owns a large portfolio of equity positions in Delaware corporations, including controlling positions in AIG, Citigroup, GM, and GMAC.  Corporate law provides a complex and comprehensive set of standards of conduct governing the behavior of controlling shareholders.  When the Treasury is the controlling shareholder, doctrines of “sovereign immunity” replace many of these existing “private law” structures of accountability with federal “public law” norms. 

 Biography

Professor Rock’s is the Saul A. Fox Distinguished Professor of Business Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He was the inaugural recipient of this position which was established with the largest single gift for a chaired professorship in the history of the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, Professor Rock is co-director for Penn’s Institute for Law and Economics. 

Professor Rock holds bachelor’s degrees from Yale University and the University of Oxford, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as editor for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.  He formerly served as a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Columbia University Law School.

For More Information

For tickets and more information on the lecture at the Hotel DuPont e-mail djcl@widener.edu.  This lecture will be repeated at Widener University School of Law at 11:00 am.

 

Visiting Scholar in Residence Lecture

  • Title: Activist Distressed Debtholders:
    Prof. Michelle Harner

    Prof. Michelle Harner

    The New Barbarians at the Gate? 

  • Speaker: Michelle M. Harner
  • Date: November 16 – 17, 2009 
  • Location and Time: TBD

Investors are increasingly purchasing the debt of distressed corporations and then using the leverage associated with that debt to influence corporate activities. The investor may seek to change a corporation’s management and board composition, operational strategies, asset holdings or capital structure. It also may seek to acquire a controlling ownership interest through a debt-for-equity exchange or a credit bid for the corporation’s assets. Recent examples of debtholder activism include Carl Icahn’s purchase of the Tropicana Resort, the formation of the Office of the CEO at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. and even the U.S. government’s role in Rick Wagoner’s resignation as CEO of General Motors Corp. Whether this type of activism enhances or impairs corporate value is subject to debate. 

Professor Harner’s research examines the strategies of activist distressed debtholders and their potential impact on corporate value. Her presentation will explain these strategies and their multiple implications for corporate boards and stakeholders generally. For example, the activism of a distressed debtholder in a corporation’s capital structure can significantly change the dynamics of a restructuring negotiation. These debtholders often pursue an agenda beyond or different from simple debt repayment, and their interests may conflict with those of other stakeholders, leading to increased acrimony and litigation among stakeholders and the corporate debtor. Professor Harner will discuss recent stakeholder litigation and the growing importance of the issues presented in that litigation as more corporations experience financial distress and, consequently, become the potential focus of activist distressed debtholders.

  

22nd Annual Ruby R. Vale Interschool Corporate Moot Court Competition

The Corporate Competition is an interscholastic appellate moot court competition co-sponsored by the Moot Court Honor Society of the Widener University School of Law, Delaware Campus. The competition focuses on the area of corporate law. Each round of the competition is judged by attorneys and judges from the bench and bar of Delaware and nearby Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Each year, a distinguished scholar in the field of corporate law joins the competition’s final bench.

The problem to be argued will contain at least two corporate issues of current legal relevance.

 For more information and to register go to: Ruby R. Vale Competition