Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) have been making headlines for two years straight. While enthusiasm for blank-check companies has notably cooled off, regulators have zoomed in on SPACs which are benefitting from a regulatory loophole. When SPACs take a start-up public, securities law treats these deals as mergers rather than initial public offerings (IPO). As […]

On September 27th, General Counsel at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released a memo asserting that college athletes at private universities should be classified as employees under federal labor law and allowed to collectively bargain. To enforce this, the NLRB intends to pursue legal action against private universities that misclassify colleges athletes as mere […]

Regulatory law, in the context of banking and insurance regulation, is naturally complex. Much is at stake since banks and insurance companies are centerpieces of our modern economies. At the same time, however, various stakeholder interests’ clash. On one hand, regulators work towards crucially important goals, such as overall financial stability and robustness, or policyholder […]

We have seen a steady change in the business world over the last few years, away from the shareholder-focused approach of the last decades. Many investors now consider more than just a company’s bottom line and take into account environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues.  In 2020 alone, over $51 billion was invested in funds […]

Among many actors influencing social, economic, and political life, corporations are increasingly gaining power. Society is divided into two categories: those demanding more social activism from corporations, and those fearing corporations may grow too powerful. In their pioneering work, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, written in 1932, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means predicted that […]

The massive migrant caravan making its way to the United States from Latin America is another symptom of the economic ills that currently plague the region. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the region’s gross domestic product was expected to grow at a rate of 1.8%. However, the pandemic caused Latin America’s GDP to contract by […]

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have great power but little responsibility. MNCs are 69 of the 100 largest economic entities in the world, which makes them more economically powerful than some countries. These powerful corporations work in poorly regulated zones to get the cheapest prices for labor, breeding potential for massive violations of human rights. Often, the […]

As the fight against the Coronavirus continues, infection and death rates are still rising at alarming rates. These rates are particularly high in states like Texas and Florida, where governments are not only doing little to fight the coronavirus, but are actively making it more difficult for private businesses to do so. Texas Governor Greg […]

In late September, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finished an administrative trial in which it sought to force genomics-sequencing company, Illumina, to reverse its recent $8 billion acquisition of Grail. An initial decision from the trial is not expected until 2022. Grail, a startup that makes blood tests to detect early-stage cancers, was founded by […]

On both sides of the Pacific, regulators are keeping a close eye on cryptocurrency developments. Earlier this month, a White House National Security Council spokeswoman said that “the White House is considering a wide ranging oversight of the cryptocurrency market to combat the growing threat of ransomware and other cybercrime.”  In China, the People’s Bank […]