Do No Evil or Do the Right Thing?

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Author: Angeli Patel | UC Berkeley School of Law | J.D. Candidate 2020 | Posted: February 15th, 2019 | Download PDF

In 2010, Google withdrew from China because of its censorship laws and online hacking. Now, it is working on a search engine for China that will censor websites and search terms that are blacklisted by the Chinese government. What’s going on?

The Chinese government has long believed in “internet sovereignty,” a concept where each country has the right to regulate its own internet—it has already achieved this vision by building The Great Firewall of China. It is also helping other authoritarian countries develop similar online architecture. For China, this also means being able to build mass surveillance and censorship systems. The development of AI makes automated, machine controlled surveillance a dystopian nightmare. The Chinese State Council announced in 2017 that it aims to become the world A.I. leader by 2030, and outperform its rivals to build a domestic industry worth almost $150 billion. Search engines are the biggest data source required to build an accurate AI system. When Google withdrew, it left Baidu, Google’s main competitor in China, to rack up the rest of the market share, and data, of the world’s largest internet market. What is Google’s role now given China’s 2030 goal?

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If Diversity Is Not a Pipeline Problem

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Author: Esther Yang | UC Berkeley School of Law | J.D. Candidate 2020 | Posted: February 14th, 2019 | Download PDF

As the investor community agreed and acknowledged, diversity makes companies more productive and retains talent.[1] A study by McKinsey & Company also showed that it was “increasingly clear that [diversity] makes sense in purely business terms.”[2] After examining proprietary data sets for 366 in public companies across a range of industries in Canada, Latin America, the United Kingdom, and the United States for several years, McKinsey found that “companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.”[3] The research showed that in the United States, “there is a linear relationship between racial and ethnic diversity and better financial performance: for every 10 percent increase in racial and ethnic diversity on the senior executive team, earnings before interest and taxes rise 0.8 percent.”[4] While correlation doesn’t equal causation, there is a general consensus that diversity is and will continue to be an increasingly important to institutional investors, pension funds, employees, and other stakeholders. (more…)

Investors Focused on Climate Change Should Integrate Land Rights into their Renewable Energy Investment Strategies

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Author: Trudie Makens | UC Berkeley School of Law | J.D. Candidate 2020 | Posted: February 14th, 2019 | Download PDF

As of the end of 2017, $12 trillion or more of the $46.6 trillion under professional management in the United States was invested pursuant to sustainable, responsible and impact investing (“SRI”) strategies.[1] This is up 38% from $8.7 trillion in 2016.[2] The drivers of SRI growth are asset managers who value environmental, social and corporate governance (“ESG”) criteria to generate long-term financial returns and social good.[3] The most important ESG issue that asset managers were focusing on in their SRI strategies was climate change.[4] Among institutional investors, climate change was also one of their top three issues.[5] (more…)

San Francisco’s Tax on Tech Companies to Fight the City’s Homelessness

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Author: Brittany Adams| UC Berkeley School of Law | J.D. Candidate 2020 | Posted: February 12th, 2019 | Download PDF

After the midterm election, Marc Benioff, the co-CEO of Salesforce, celebrated the passage of San Francisco’s Proposition C on Twitter: “Prop C’s victory means the homeless will have a home & the help they truly need! Let the city come together in Love for those who need it most! . . .”[1] Proposition C, which passed with approximately 60% of the vote, will provide the city with up to $300 million in additional funds to fight the city’s homelessness crisis by raising the gross receipts tax by an average of 0.5 percent for San Francisco companies that earn more than $50 million in revenue a year.[2] As a result, Salesforce, which is headquartered in San Francisco, will pay approximately $10-11 million more in taxes annually.[3]

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The Gig Economy and the Modern Corporation: How Airbnb’s host equity SEC proposal is putting shareholder primacy advocates to bed

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Author: Julia Molo | UC Berkeley School of Law | J.D. Candidate 2020 | Posted: February 6th, 2019 | Download PDF

Corporate governance has experienced a phenomenal transformation over the past several decades. The story of this shift, and Milton Friedman’s 1970 New York Times article heard around the world (or at least, the boardrooms of corporate America), are well-documented. Friedman’s article laid the intellectual foundation for the “shareholder primacy” revolution of the 1980s. In the decades since, Friedman’s view that the sole social responsibility of the firm is to maximize shareholder profits— leaving social and stakeholder concerns to individual bargaining and the government—has become sacrosanct in law, business, and academia. An impressive newspaper article, to say the least. (more…)

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