20 Jun, 2011 08:00
HomeRussia & FSU
Justice Ministry considers canceling registration for political parties
The Justice Ministry "should react to specific violations of law and not to a hypothetic possibility"
Justice Minister Aleksandr Konovalov has stated that registration for political parties should be canceled. Instead, he suggested that their leaders only notify the ministry of their intentions.
In an interview with Profile weekly, Aleksandr Konovalov said that the Justice Ministry “should react to specific violations of law and not to a hypothetic possibility.”He also said that some forces use the registration process as a kind of publicity. “I sometimes think that the fight for registration for some political forces becomes liquid political capital. But if we register such a party and allow it to take part in elections, it will soon become clear that it has nothing to offer,” Konovalov added. In April the Justice Ministry refused registration to the ROT-Front party for the fifth time, saying that its emblem, a fist within a star, symbolizes “a fight against the existing order” and that its name is the same as a well-known confectionary brand. The party then stated that the refusal was illegal and it was going to fight for its rights.Several parties are pushing for the cancellation of the obligatory registration of parties. Among them is the unregistered nationalist party the Other Russia, led by Eduard Limonov. The party was set up last December, but was refused registration on the grounds that their program contradicts federal legislation. The Party of National Freedom (Parnas), a newly-established opposition party in the making, has the same point in its program. They also say there should be a simple notification procedure. Parnas is now undergoing registration, their documents are now being considered by the Justice Ministry, which is expected to come up with a decision by June 23. For a party to be registered, it should fulfill the main requirement that is to have at least 45,000 members. Before 2001, there was no threshold at all, while in 2006 a party needed to have 10,000 members to be able to file for registration. In the past two years not a single party has been registered in Russia. And within the last ten years their number has decreased by almost half from several dozen to the current seven.
Registration request by Pirate Party of Russia turned down
Opposition party denied registration for extremist connotations and brand confusion


Nicolas Cage’s Private Island in the Bahamas for Sale at $7.5 Million (PHOTOS)
Alicia Selin Published: June 10, 2022
Private Islands Inc. / Frazer Harrison, Getty Images
Nicolas Cage's 30-acre private island is for sale at $7.5 million. The actor purchased the island in the center of the Bahamas in 2006 and now it could be yours.
Cage has owned the 30-acre private island for the last 16 years. With its superb sandy beaches and bright blue water, it literally looks like paradise. The island, which is named Leaf Cay, is located just south of Bock Cay and is part of the Exuma Cays string of islands, which span over 120 miles.
According to Private Islands Online, the Exuma Cays are considered to be among the best places in the Bahamas for sailing. The listing states that "this island has it all: three great beaches, protected deepwater access suitable for anchorage and docking of large yachts and great elevations."
Cage started his acting career in high school, when he joined his school production of Golden Boy. The actor dropped out of high school when he was 17 and landed his first television role in 1981 in the pilot for The Best of Times. He landed his first movie role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and has since starred in films including Gone in 60 Seconds, City of Angels and many, many more.
Inside Nicolas Cage's Private Island in the Bahamas
The actor bought the 30-acre private island in 2006. It's for sale at $7.5 million now/
Take a Tour: Brangelina's Former $13.6M Hamptons Home
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's former 8,500-square-foot home in Southampton has a 40-foot pool, multiple fireplaces and a tennis court. Take a look inside!
Source: Nicolas Cage’s Private Island in the Bahamas for Sale at $7.5 Million (PHOTOS)
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Home - LocalHome Slider Feature
Honolulu, HI (KTRS) The “Mighty Mo” is getting underway on the 75th anniversary of her commissioning.
The U.S. Postal Service is honoring the battleship Missouri with a forever stamp, and dedicated the stamp Tuesday during a ceremony in Pearl Harbor.
The Missouri was commissioned on June 11, 1944 and joined the military efforts in the Pacific theater during the final months of World War II.
On Sept. 2, 1945, in a ceremony that was broadcast around the world, military officials from the Allied powers and imperial Japan convened on her deck to sign the documents confirming Japan’s surrender, ending the war.
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The Corporate Law Professors' Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood brief crops up at SCOTUSblog
In the SCOTUSblog symposium on the contraceptive mandate cases, Elizabeth Wydra argues that:
Allowing the religious values of the individual owners of a company to be passed through to the corporation itself would not only run counter to well-established constitutional law, but it would also run counter to fundamental principles of corporate law. As a brief filed by corporate law scholarsexplains, “[t]he first principle of corporate law is that for-profit corporations are entities that possess legal interests and a legal identity of their own—one separate and distinct from their shareholders.” In fact, as recounted in the brief, this legal separateness is “the corporation’s most precious characteristic,” according to one early American treatise writer, because it creates “limited liability” for business founders and investors, shielding their personal assets. If the Court were to accept attempts by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood to blur the distinction between a corporation and its owners, it could undermine key features of corporate law.
The difficulty with Wydra's argument, of course, is that the Brief is a crock. As I explain in A Critique of the Corporate Law Professors’ Amicus Brief in Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, which is now forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review Online:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) effected numerous changes in the legal regime governing health care and health insurance. Among the ACA’s more controversial provisions is the so-called contraceptive mandate, which requires employer-provided health care insurance plans to provide coverage of all FDA approved contraceptive methods.
On March 25, 2014, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood cases, in which the shareholders of two for-profit family-owned corporations argue that requiring them to comply with the contraception mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Forty-four law corporate law professors filed an amicus brief in these cases, arguing that the essence of a corporation is its “separateness” from its shareholders and that, on the facts of these cases, there is no reason to disregard the separateness between shareholders and the corporations they control. The Brief is replete with errors, overstated claims, or red herrings, and misdirection.
Contrary to the Brief’s arguments, basic corporate law principles strongly support the position of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood. In particular, the doctrine known as reverse veil piercing provides a clear and practical vehicle for disregarding the legal separateness of those corporations from their shareholders and thus granting those shareholders standing to assert their free exercise rights.
Keywords: Hobby Lobby, contraceptive mandate, free exercise, piercing the corporate veil, reverse veil piercing, amicus brief, corporate law professors, constitution, supreme court, Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, RFRA, Religious Freedom Restoration Act
Should Christian businesses reincorporate as B Corps? If they did, would they have a stronger case against the Obamacare mandate?
The import for Hobby Lobby of Obama's unilateral relief from the Obamacare mandate for businesses
Bainbridge on Hobby Lobby & Calistoga Wood
Reverse Veil Peircing and The Duty of Majority Shareholders
Posted at 01:38 PM in Religion, SCOTUS and Con Law | Permalink | Comments (1)
NY Court Gets the Geography of Revlon Correct
A client memo from Reed Smith informs us that:
The recent decision in Badowski v. Corrao, No. 652986/2011, NYLJ 1202642854864 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. County, Commercial Division), is a timely application by a New York court of the limitations of so-called Revlon duties to stock-for-stock mergers.
In Badowski, the court dismissed with prejudice a class action brought by a shareholder of the target (Vertro, Inc.), challenging Vertro’s stock-for-stock merger with Inuvo, Inc. The court applied Delaware law under the internal affairs rule because Vertro is incorporated under the laws of Delaware. In applying Delaware law, the court clearly adhered to the principle that Revlon duties are not implicated where the challenged transaction does not result in a true change of control. ...
... Revlon duties are only triggered when a company embarks on a transaction, whether on its own or in response to an unsolicited offer, that will result in a change of control. Citing well-established Delaware authority, the court in Badowski stated as follows:
In the context of a stock-for-stock merger, a change of control for Revlon purposes can be triggered if the target's shareholders are relegated to a minority in the resulting entity, and the resulting entity has a controlling stockholder or stockholder group. Where, however, ownership of the merged company will remain in "a large, fluid, changeable and changing market," Revlon is not implicated.
The court in Badowski found that the facts, as pleaded, would not support the imposition of Revlonduties in part because there was no allegation that the shares of the resulting entity will not be freely traded in the marketplace, or that the former Vertro shareholders will be subjected to a controlling shareholder or block of shareholders. Badowski, at *7-*8. The court also recognized that the allegations of the complaint were contradicted by the proxy statement, as the final proxy statement stated that upon completion of the merger, current Vertro stockholders would hold approximately 52.8 percent of the outstanding shares of the new company, which would change to 51.4 percent, assuming exercise of all outstanding options (whether or not vested) and warrants. Id. at *8 n.3.
Plaintiff also argued that Revlon duties were implicated because the Vertro board had actively solicited a merger with a party other than Inuvo, and because Vertro’s officer and director contracts contained "change in control" provisions that were triggered by the merger. The court, however, rejected both of these arguments. The court held that the board’s initiation of an active bidding process does not render Revlon applicable unless the board seeks to sell control or takes other actions that would break up the company. Id. at *8. As to the officer and director contracts, the court found that plaintiff had cited no authority that change in control provisions in employment contracts establish change of control for Revlon purposes. Id.
Sadly, the Court did not cite my article The Geography of Revlon-Land, but the Court's analysis is consistent with the approach I advanced therein. Like the Court, I argued that:
Acme and Ajax are both public corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Acme offers to acquire Ajax in a merger of equals in which Acme shareholders would receive Ajax stock for their Acme shares. This is an easy case. Recall that in Time, Chancellor Allen had said that Revlon was not triggered because there was no change of control. This was so, he explained, because control of the combined entity after the merger remained “in a large, fluid, changeable and changing market.” The same is true here. Accordingly, because the merger does not involve a sale or other change of control, the Acme “board's decision . . . is entitled to judicial deference pursuant to the procedural and substantive operation of the business judgment rule.” In contrast, if the acquiring firm has a controlling shareholder, the merger would result in the requisite change of control and Revlon would trigger.
Start with the same facts as in the preceding hypothetical, but now assume Acme proposes a triangular merger in which Ajax would be merged into a wholly owned Acme subsidiary. Despite the change in form, the substantive effect of this transaction is precisely the same. The combined entity ends up being owned by dispersed shareholders “in a large, fluid, changeable and changing market.” Only by elevating form over substance could Revlon apply here.
Of course, this is easy. The more difficult questions are presented when cash constitutes some of all of the consideration to be paid by the acquirer. Some Delaware Chancery Court decisions suggest that Revlon would be triggered in such cases. In my article, I argue that those decisions are inconsistent with Delaware Supreme Court rulings and sould policy.
Posted at 05:46 PM in Dept of Self-Promotion, Mergers and Takeovers | Permalink | Comments (0)
My reply to the corporate law professors' brief in Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood is up on SSRN
Bainbridge, Stephen M., A Critique of the Corporate Law Professors’ Amicus Brief in Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood (February 21, 2014). UCLA School of Law, Law-Econ Research Paper No. 14-03. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2399638:
Abstract: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) effected numerous changes in the legal regime governing health care and health insurance. Among the ACA’s more controversial provisions is the so-called contraceptive mandate, which requires employer-provided health care insurance plans to provide coverage of all FDA approved contraceptive methods.
In an ideal world, some law review will accept it and publish it more or less as is (block quotes and all) before the March 25th oral argument in these cases or, at least, before the end of the Supreme Court term. [Hint, hint.] In a less than ideal world, some law review will decide it should be published next fall as a document of historical interest. [Hint, hint.]
But the main point is to rebut the Brief and to defend my argument in Using Reverse Veil Piercing to Vindicate the Free Exercise Rights of Incorporated Employers, 16 Green Bag 2d 235 (2013), from the attack directed at that article by the Brief.
My article on reverse veil piercing used in ACA mandate litigation brief
A corporate conscience? I don't think so
Supreme Court Agrees to Decide if Christian-Owned Businesses Must Violate Faith to Obey Obama
Admin. reaffirms birth control stance
Douglas Laycock on the government's "shell game" in the Hobby Lobby contraceptive mandate case
Laycock writes:
The threshold issue in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius is whether any plaintiff’s free exercise of religion is substantially burdened within the meaning of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
On that issue, the government’s argument is a shell game. Only the individuals have religious-liberty rights; only the corporations are regulated. And more: Even the individuals have no rights when they act or refuse to act as directors, officers, or managers of the corporation. Not only are the individuals separate persons from the corporation, but the individuals are divided into additional separate persons, depending on the capacity in which they act. This is formalism in the extreme.
Whatever one thinks about the corporations, the individual plaintiffs are clearly exercising their religion. The government appears to believe that these individuals forfeited their religious-liberty rights with respect to the business when they incorporated the business, and therefore forfeited any right not to pay for emergency contraception and IUDs when the business grew to more than fifty employees.
Congress left a clear and explicit record that the public meaning of RFRA covers for-profit corporations and their owners.
Of course, as regular readers know, reverse veil piercing would also stop the government "shell game."
Posted at 05:43 PM in SCOTUS and Con Law | Permalink | Comments (1)
Smith on Dooley
Gordon Smith has posted a nice tribute to the late Michael Dooley.
Posted at 02:09 PM in Law School | Permalink | Comments (0)
Henry Manne's tribute to Mike Dooley
Henry Manne sent along this tribute to our mutual friend Michael P. Dooley, who passed way this week, and kindly authorized me to post it:
I suspect that your relationship with Mike was a lot like mine with Armen Alchian. In each case they really got us started on a serious intellectual journey. My own relationship with Mike was a delight from its beginning when he showed up with a large U Va contingent at one of the summer programs in economics for law professors. From day one of that program, Mike was, I believe, hooked on the significance of economics for legal studies, and his earliest work reflects that keen understanding. I mention that because such an approach already indicated a degree of intellectual integrity and indeed braveness that few law professors at that time would exhibit. But his integrity in this regard became a part of a “grand awakening” of the intellectual life of the U Va Law School, and I know that he was a leader in making that school the powerhouse that it became. Over the years, I always looked forward to my infrequent but happy meetings with Mike, and, for a long time, his work in corporations, while distinctively his own, was that rarity, scholarship that took my work very seriously. I am sure that he died with the satisfaction of knowing that we won that intellectual battle and that it was a fight worth waging. RIP, Mike.
Mike was the man who put my feet on the path my intellectual journey has followed, but I should also gratefully acknowledge the huge role Henry has played in that journey, even when the directions I followed did not always please him, he remains--along with Mike--the standard of excellence to which I aspire.
Keith Paul Bishop on the Hobby Lobby Corporate Law Professors' Brief
A truly great post that made me very happy.
Documenting the misrepresentations in the corporate law professors' Hobby Lobby brief: Part 1
The more I read the brief filed by 44 corporate law professors in the Obamacare contraceptive mandate cases pending before the Supreme Court, the angrier I get. The brief has a lot of whoppers. Here's one:
The Brief claims that:
Hobby Lobby and Conestoga want to argue, in effect, that the corporate veil is only a one-way street: its shareholders can get protection from tort or contract liability by standing behind the veil, but the corporation can ask a court to disregard the corporate veil on this occasion.[1]
To the best knowledge of this author, that claim is false. No one arguing on behalf of Hobby Lobby or Conestoga Wood has claimed that they are somehow immune to the ordinary rules of corporate veil piercing. They are not asking for a one-way street. Rather, they are asking that the law as it stands be applied them both forward and in reverse.
I'm hard at work on a comprehensive reply to the Brief. Watch this space for further documentation of the problems with the Brief and, I hope soon, the full rebuttal.
[1] Brief at 14.
Posted at 09:38 AM in SCOTUS and Con Law | Permalink | Comments (0)
Michael P. Dooley, University of Virginia law professor, scholar, and friend. RIP.
I have heard from several reliable sources that my teacher, mentor, and friend Michael Dooley, the William S. Potter Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Virginia School of Law, has passed away. Up until his 2012 retirement, Mike taught corporations, corporate financial transactions, mergers and acquisitions, and contracts. In 1984-1985, I was privileged to be his student in three classes and his research assistant.
Mike became not just a boss and teacher but also a mentor. Through his support and advice, he gave me the confidence to believe I could make it as a legal academic. And, when I went on the teaching market, Mike took a dispositive hand. His influence paid particular dividends when I applied for a position at the Illinois College of Law. Mike had started his teaching career at Illinois and many of his friends from those days were now senior faculty there. Needless to say, my new colleagues later told me that Mike’s endorsement had been the decisive factor in their decision to hire me.
As an academic, I have been tremendously influenced by Mike’s scholarship, especially his article Two Models of Corporate Governance[1] and its progeny. One of the chief insights of the law and economics movement was the identification of agency costs as a critical corporate governance problem. Unfortunately, as a result, several generations of scholars came to “believe that the fundamental concern of corporate law is ‘agency costs.’”[2]
In Two Models, Mike restored needed balance. To be sure, he acknowledged, deterrence and punishment of misconduct by the board and senior management is a necessary function of corporate governance. But accountability standing alone is an inadequate normative account of corporate law. Instead, as he persuasively explained, a fully specified account of corporate law must incorporate a value he called Authority:
If the board is never made accountable for its decisions, it is liable to exercise its power irresponsibly vis-à-vis the shareholders. On the other hand, the power to hold a party accountable is the power to interfere and, ultimately, the power to decide. Thus, affording shareholders the right to demand frequent judicial review of board decisions has the effect of transferring decision-making authority from the board to the shareholders.[3]
Mike went on to explain why such a transfer would significantly reduce the efficiency of corporate decision making, ultimately harming shareholder interests. Accordingly, he explained, the core problem was figuring out whether Authority or Responsibility values predominated in any given setting. My work on director primacy grew out of that insight.
I like to think that I also had something to do with that course correction, but I have always acknowledged that my role in many respects was that of a popularizer of Mike’s work. “Professor Michael Dooley was the first to make the connection between the work of Kenneth Arrow and the structure of Delaware corporate law. … Professor Bainbridge has adopted Professor Dooley's application of Arrow's theory and readily acknowledges the contribution Professor Dooley has made in the development of his director primacy model.” Bernard S. Sharfman, Why Proxy Access is Harmful to Corporate Governance, 37 J. Corp. L. 387, 399 n.83 (2012).
I am deeply saddened both personally and professionally by this loss. My thoughts and prayers go out to his wife Jean, his family, and all the many people who loved him.
[1] Michael P. Dooley, Two Models of Corporate Governance, 47 Bus. Law. 461 (1992).
[2] Kent Greenfield, The Place of Workers in Corporate Law, 39 B.C. L. Rev. 283, 295 (1998) (emphasis supplied).
[3] Two Models, supra note 1, at 470.
Posted at 11:17 AM in Law School | Permalink | Comments (2)
What do Obamacare and the draft have in common?
Weekly Standard:
President Obama defended Obamacare and called signing up for the health care program "just part of growing up ...."
Kind of like signing up for the draft back in my day, I guess. Both entail huge government program and infringements on personal liberty that Washington wants to make us view as routine.
Happy President's Day
A survey for lawyers and legal academics on the role of experiential learning in legal education
I've been asked to announce that:
As you may know, an ABA task force has recently proposed to establish minimum requirements within ABA-accredited law schools for "experiential" learning related to building practical skills and competencies. (Similar proposals are percolating up from state bar association task forces as well.) We believe this endeavor to be an intriguing and important invitation for law schools to re-imagine how they deliver legal education, and on this basis we are generally supportive. At the same time, a challenging question that the ABA and other task forces face is the question of what topics constitute "skills and competencies." Within business law, this challenge is perhaps greatest for attorneys whose practice is principally "transactional" in nature (in contrast to work that is oriented around litigation). It is unclear how much input transactionally-oriented business law practitioners (attorneys, other professionals, educators) have had on the process of drafting the proposed guidelines, or whether there has been much systematic analysis of what topics constitute important "skills" for entering transactional attorneys.
To address these gaps, we have developed an on-line survey instrument to help gauge what sorts of core competencies established professionals in transactional practice areas consider important. We hope the results of the survey will help both practitioners and legal educators assess (and if necessary, work to amend) the current proposed guidelines. Although largely directed to practicing attorneys, the survey is also open to other professionals who work closely with practicing attorneys in transactional practices (such as bankers, accountants, financial advisers, etc.).
Here are the two favors we ask of you:
(1) Please take a few moments yourself to fill out the survey. It will not take longer than 5-10 minutes of your time.
(2) Please ask your colleagues, partners, associates, co-workers, and other professional contacts to consider filling out the survey.
The more input we can get from experts in the area the better advice we'll both receive and be able to give.
The survey is available on-line, at
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/K6HQFR7
When complete, results of the survey will be made available on the website for the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy (BCLBE), at http://www.law.berkeley.edu/bclbe.htm.
Law Professors Spend too Much Time Thinking About the US Supreme Court
I've been reading an otherwise very fine law review article on the relationship of law and equity, which is flawed (IMHO) by its exclusive focus on US Supreme Court cases. Would the author's analysis not have been better served by also considering the unique status of the three remaining state judicial systems--Delaware, Mississippi, and Tennessee--that retain separate equity courts? Might he not especially have wanted to examine the workings of the Delaware Court of Chancery, of which prominent federal judge Jed Rakoff has written that:
I think it is substantially wrong to view the Delaware Chancery Court as a specialized court, at least in the sense of a court of limited subject matter jurisdiction. In actuality, the jurisdiction of the Delaware Chancery Court is very broad, comprising the extensive equity jurisdiction that marked the reach of the English High Court of Chancery back in the days when the courts of England were divided between the courts of law and the courts of equity. If, then, the Delaware Court of Chancery speaks with the clarity and vision of a generalist court, it is because it really is, fundamentally, a generalist court. Because, however, its jurisdiction includes so much of Delaware corporate law, and because so many large corporations are incorporated in Delaware, its decisions have a huge impact on the development of corporate law everywhere.
Surely that unique blend deserves at least mention, yes?
Posted at 12:03 PM in Law School, SCOTUS and Con Law | Permalink | Comments (2)
Everything The Economist says about shareholder activism is wrong
From this week's leader:
An analysis of around 2,000 interventions in America during 1994-2007 found not only that the share prices and operating performance of the firms involved improved over the five years after the intervention, but also that the improvement was greatest towards the end of the five-year period. The firms activists targeted tended to be underperforming relative to their industry.
Yes, there was such an analysis, but for one thing is was a study solely of interventions by hedge funds. It says nothing--nada, zip, zilch--about the merits of activism by, say, union pension funds.
Second, the analysis was done by folks with skin in the game--a deep ideological commitment to shareholder activism, so deep that they set up a Harvard law school clinic to promote it. I'm not saying they skewed their numbers. They are too good scholars to do that. I am just saying that all empirical studies need to be taken with a grain of salt and those by folks with an agenda need a larger than usual grain. (And, yes, I have skin in this game too.)
BTW, you'll want to compare Wachtell Lipton's critique of the analysis (available here and here) and Bebchuk's defense thereof (available here).
Back to The Economist:
Rather than making life harder for activists, America’s regulators should make it easier. They could adopt Britain’s practice of allowing activists to call a shareholder meeting at which individual board members can be voted out. “Poison pills” that are triggered when activists buy shares should be banned.
Stuff and nonsense. As I explained in Preserving Director Primacy by Managing Shareholder Interventions:
There are strong normative arguments for disempowering shareholders and, accordingly, for rolling back the gains shareholder activists have made. Whether that will prove possible in the long run or not, however, in the near term attention must be paid to the problem of managing shareholder interventions.
This problem arises because not all shareholder interventions are created equally. Some are legitimately designed to improve corporate efficiency and performance, especially by holding poorly performing boards of directors and top management teams to account. But others are motivated by an activist’s belief that he or she has better ideas about how to run the company than the incumbents, which may be true sometimes but often seems dubious. Worse yet, some interventions are intended to advance an activist’s agenda that is not shared by other investors.
This chapter proposes managing shareholder interventions through changes to the federal proxy rules designed to make it more difficult for activists to effect operational changes, while encouraging shareholder efforts to hold directors and managers accountable.
I've said it before and, sadly, I must say it again: The Economist is ineducable on shareholder activism.
Managing Shareholder Interventions: An Updated Director Primacy Critique of Shareholder Empowerment
Carl Icahn On The New Shareholder-Director Exchange
"Are activist shareholders good for investors?"
Memo to Harold Myerson: Shareholder Wealth Maximization is a Norm not a Myth
Posted at 05:41 PM in Shareholder Activism | Permalink | Comments (0)
In the WaPo, Harold Myerson opines that:
In a well-intentioned op-ed in The Post [“Dialing up the power in people’s phone calls,” op-ed, Feb. 9], Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales recently extolled his new phone venture, which has pledged to devote a quarter of its profits to “good causes” selected by an independent foundation. Now, I support good causes as much as the next fellow, and I have nothing negative to say about this initiative. I am compelled, however, to note that in delineating the obligations that corporations must meet, Wales made an error at once so common and so fundamental that it screams for correction.
In his discussion of the ways in which increasingly unpopular big businesses defend themselves against their critics, Wales wrote: “They argue, correctly, that the legal requirement of for-profit companies to maximize returns to shareholders limits their behavior.”
I never sought the opportunity to correct Wikipedia’s founder. Nevertheless, facts are facts, and the fact is that there is no legal requirement for for-profit companies to maximize returns to shareholders. When a company is for sale, its directors are required to do all they can to maximize its value. At any other time, corporate law simply dictates that directors are supposed to help the company prosper and do nothing to benefit themselves at the company’s expense. ...
The idea that corporations exist to reward their shareholders arose not in a body of law but from the work of ideologically driven economists. ...
I suppose he could be more wrong, but it is hard to see how.
Corporate law’s classic answer to the question of the proper objective of the directors famously was articulated in Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.[1] Henry Ford embarked on a plan of retaining earnings, lowering prices, improving quality, and expanding production. The plaintiff Dodge brothers contended an improper altruism towards his workers and customers motivated Ford. The court agreed, strongly rebuking Ford:
A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits, or to the nondistribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes.[2]
Consequently, “it is not within the lawful powers of a board of directors to shape and conduct the affairs of a corporation for the merely incidental benefit of shareholders and for the primary purpose of benefiting others.”[3] Dodge’s theory of shareholder wealth maximization has been widely accepted by courts over an extended period of time. Almost three quarters of a century after Dodge, for example, the Delaware chancery court similarly opined: “It is the obligation for directors to attempt, within the law, to maximize the long-run interests of the corporation’s stockholders.”[4]
To be sure, despite the powerful rhetoric of cases like Dodge, current law allows boards of directors substantial discretion to consider the impact of their decisions on interests other than shareholder wealth maximization. This discretion, however, exists not as the outcome of conscious social policy but rather as an unintended consequence of the business judgment rule.[5] To be sure, some scholars find an inconsistency between the business judgment rule and the shareholder wealth maximization norm. In contrast, I concede that the business judgment rule sometimes has the effect of insulating a board of directors from liability when it puts the interests of nonshareholder constituencies ahead of those of shareholders, but deny that that is the rule’s intent.[6] Instead, as the Delaware supreme court has explained:
Under Delaware law, the business judgment rule is the offspring of the fundamental principle, codified in [Delaware General Corporation Law] § 141(a), the business and affairs of a Delaware corporation are managed by or under its board of directors.... The business judgment rule exists to protect and promote the full and free exercise of the managerial power granted to Delaware directors.[7]
The business judgment rule thus operationalizes the intuition that fiat— i.e., centralization of decision-making authority—is the essential attribute of efficient corporate governance. As Nobel laureate economist Kenneth Arrow explains, however, authority and accountability cannot be reconciled:
[Accountability mechanisms] must be capable of correcting errors but should not be such as to destroy the genuine values of authority. Clearly, a sufficiently strict and continuous organ of [accountability] can easily amount to a denial of authority. If every decision of A is to be reviewed by B, then all we have really is a shift in the locus of authority from A to B and hence no solution to the original problem.[8]
The business judgment rule prevents such a shift in the locus of decision-making authority from boards to judges. It does so by establishing a limited system for case-by-case oversight in which judicial review of the substantive merits of those decisions is avoided. The court begins with a presumption against review.[9] It then reviews the facts to determine not the quality of the decision, but rather whether the decision-making process was tainted by self-dealing and the like.[10] The questions asked are objective and straightforward: Did the board commit fraud? Did the board commit an illegal act? Did the board self-deal? Whether or not the board exercised reasonable care is irrelevant, as well it should be.[11] The business judgment rule thus erects a prophylactic barrier by which courts pre-commit to resisting the temptation to review the merits of the board’s decision.
The business judgment rule, however, has no application where the board of directors is disabled by conflicted interests.[12] In such cases, concern for director accountability trumps protection of their discretionary authority. In corporate takeovers, for example, a well-known conflict of interest taints target company director decision making. Not surprisingly, therefore, the law denies directors discretion to consider the interests of nonshareholder constituencies in the takeover setting.[13] To be sure, the interests of shareholders and nonshareholder may be consistent in takeover fights, just as they are in many settings. In light of the directors’ conflict of interest, however, we can no longer trust them to make an unbiased assessment of those competing interests. The conflict between management and shareholder interests requires skepticism when management claims to be acting in the stakeholders’ best interests. A board decision to resist a hostile offer may have been motivated by concern for potentially affected nonshareholder constituencies, but it may just as easily have been motivated by the directors’ and managers’ concern for their own positions and perquisites. Selfish decisions thus easily could be justified by an appropriate paper trail of tears over the employees’ fate. Consequently, in the takeover setting, rigorous application of the shareholder wealth maximization norm properly becomes the standard of judicial review.
Shareholder wealth maximization is not only the law, it is also a basic feature of corporate practice. Although some scholars claim that directors do not adhere to the shareholder wealth maximization norm, the weight of the evidence long has been to the contrary. A 1995 National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) report stated: “The primary objective of the corporation is to conduct business activities with a view to enhancing corporate profit and shareholder gain.”[14] A 1996 NACD report on director professionalism set out the same objective, without any qualifying language on nonshareholder constituencies.[15] A 1999 Conference Board survey found that directors of U.S. corporations generally define their role as running the company for the benefit of its shareholders.[16] The 2000 edition of Korn/Ferry International’s well-known director survey found that when making corporate decisions directors consider shareholder interests most frequently, although it also found that a substantial number of directors feel a responsibility towards stakeholders.[17]
What people do arguably matters more than what they say. Director fidelity to shareholder interests has been enhanced in recent years by the market for corporate control and, some say, activism by institutional investors. Hence, for example, the widespread corporate restructurings of the 1990s are commonly attributed to director concern for shareholder wealth maximization.[18] In addition, changes in director compensation have created additional hostages ensuring director fidelity to shareholder interests.[19] Directors have long given shareholders reputational hostages. If the company fails on their watch, after all, the directors’ reputation and thus their future employability is likely to suffer. In addition, it is becoming common to compensate outside directors in stock rather than cash and to establish minimum stock ownership requirements as a qualification for election.[20] Tying up the proportion of the director’s personal wealth in stock of the corporation creates another hostage, further aligning the director’s interests with those of shareholders.[21]
[1] 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919).
[4] Katz v. Oak Indus., Inc., 508 A.2d 873, 879 (Del. Ch. 1989).
[5] The business judgment rule, of course, pervades every aspect of corporate law, from allegedly negligent decisions by directors, to self-dealing transactions, to board decisions to seek dismissal of shareholder litigation, and so on. See, e.g., Sinclair Oil Corp. v. Levien, 280 A.2d 717 (Del. 1971) (fiduciary duties of controlling shareholder); Shlensky v. Wrigley, 237 N.E.2d 776 (Ill. App. 1968) (operational decision); Auerbach v. Bennett, 393 N.E.2d 994 (N.Y. 1979) (dismissal of derivative litigation). Two conceptions of the business judgment rule compete in the case law. One treats the rule as having substantive content. In this version, the business judgment rule comes into play only after one has first determined that the directors satisfied some standard of conduct. See, e.g., Cede & Co. v. Technicolor, Inc., 634 A.2d 345, 360 (Del. 1993) (holding that plaintiffs rebut the business judgment rule’s presumption of good faith by “providing evidence that directors, in reaching their challenged decision, breached any one of the triads of their fiduciary duty—good faith, loyalty or due care”). Alternatively, the business judgment rule is seen as an abstention doctrine. Under this version, the court will abstain from reviewing the substantive merits of the directors’ conduct unless the plaintiff can rebut the business judgment rule’s presumption of good faith. See, e.g., Shlensky v. Wrigley, 237 N.E.2d 776, 779 (Ill. App. 1968) (holding that: “In a purely business corporation ... the authority of the directors in the conduct of the business of the corporation must be regarded as absolute when they act within the law, and the court is without authority to substitute its judgment for that of the directors.”). For the reasons developed below, I find the abstention version more persuasive. See infra notes Error! Bookmark not defined.-11 and accompanying text.
[6] To be sure, a few cases can be read to suggest that directors need not treat shareholder wealth maximization as their sole normative objective. Upon close examination, however, most of these cases in fact are not inconsistent with the shareholder wealth maximization norm. In Shlensky v. Wrigley, 237 N.E.2d 776 (Ill. App. 1968), for example, a minority shareholder in the Chicago Cubs sued Wrigley, the team’s majority shareholder, over the latter’s famous refusal to install lights at Wrigley Field. Shlensky claimed the decision against lights was motivated by Wrigley’s beliefs that baseball was a day-time sport and that night baseball might have a deteriorating effect on the neighborhood surrounding Wrigley Field. Id. at 778. Despite Shlensky’s apparently uncontested evidence that Wrigley was more concerned with nonshareholder than with shareholder interests, the Illinois Appellate Court dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Id. at 778-80. Although this result on superficial examination may appear to devalue shareholder wealth maximization, on close examination the case involves nothing more than a wholly unproblematic application of the business judgment rule.
[7] Smith v. Van Gorkom, 488 A.2d 858, 872 (Del. 1985). Cf. Marx v. Akers, 666 N.E.2d 1034, (N.Y. 1996) (noting that “shareholder derivative actions infringe upon the managerial discretion of corporate boards…. Consequently, we have historically been reluctant to permit shareholder derivative suits, noting that the power of courts to direct the management of a corporation's affairs should be ‘exercised with restraint.’”); see also Pogostin v. Rice, 480 A.2d 619, 624 (noting that “the derivative action impinges on the managerial freedom of directors”).
[8] Kenneth J. Arrow, The Limits of Organization 78 (1974).
[9] See, e.g., Aronson v. Lewis, 473 A.2d 805, 812 (Del. 1984) (explaining that the rule creates a presumption that the directors or officers of a corporation acted on an informed basis, in good faith, and in the honest belief that the action taken was in the best interests of the company).
[10] See, e.g., Kamin v. American Express Co., 383 N.Y.S.2d 807, 811 (N.Y. Sup. 1976) (stating that absent “fraud, dishonesty, or nonfeasance,” the court would not substitute its judgment for that of the directors).
[11] See, e.g., Joy v. North, 692 F.2d 880, 885 (2d Cir. 1982) (stating: “While it is often stated that corporate directors and officers will be liable for negligence in carrying out their corporate duties, all seem agreed that such a statement is misleading.... Whatever the terminology, the fact is that liability is rarely imposed upon corporate directors or officers simply for bad judgment and this reluctance to impose liability for unsuccessful business decisions has been doctrinally labeled the business judgment rule.”); Brehm v. Eisner, 746 A.2d 244, 262-64 (Del. 2000) (rejecting plaintiff’s contention that the business judgment rule includes an element of “substantive due care” and holding that the business judgment rule requires only “process due care”).
[12] See Bayer v. Beran, 49 N.Y.S.2d 2, 6 (Sup. Ct. 1944) (explaining: “The ‘business judgment rule’ . . . yields to the rule of undivided loyalty. This great rule of law is designed ‘to avoid the possibility of fraud and to avoid the temptation of self-interest.’”).
[13] Under the Delaware supreme court’s decision in Revlon, Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc., 506 A.2d 173 (Del. 1986), a target’s board of directors may not protect stakeholder interests at the expense of shareholder interests. Id. at 182. Rather, any management action benefiting stakeholders must produce ancillary shareholder benefits. Id. In addition, once an auction of corporate control begins, stakeholders become entirely irrelevant. In such an auction, shareholder wealth maximization is the board’s only appropriate concern. Id. Indeed, in this context, considering any factors other than shareholder wealth violates the board’s fiduciary duties. Id. at 185.
[14] National Association of Corporate Directors, Report of the NACD Blue Ribbon Commission on Director Compensation: Purposes, Principles, and Best Practices 1 (1995) (noting, however, that “long-term shareholder gain” requires “fair treatment” of nonshareholder constituents).
[15] See National Association of Corporate Directors, Report of the NACD Blue Ribbon Commission on Director Professionalism 1 (1996).
[16] The Conference Board, Determining Board Effectiveness: A Handbook for Directors and Officers 7 (1999).
[17] Korn/ Ferry International, 27th Annual Board of Directors Study 33-34 (2000).
[18] See, e.g., Michael Useem, Investor Capitalism: How Money Managers Are Changing the Face of Corporate America 137-67 (1996) (discussing corporate restructurings as a consequence of investor pressure).
[19] Hostages—reciprocal transaction-specific investments—are a central concept in institutional economics. Giving and taking hostages is a mechanism for making credible commitments. I’ll pay the ransom, because I know that you will kill the hostage if I do not. See Williamson, supra note Error! Bookmark not defined., at 75-78 and 124-29 (discussing the hostage model of contracting).
[20] See generally Charles M. Elson, The Duty of Care, Compensation, and Stock Ownership, 63 U. Cin. L. Rev. 649 (1995) (discussing stock-based director compensation and incentives created thereby).
[21] See Outside Directors: The Fading Appeal of the Boardroom, The Economist, Feb. 20, 2001, at 67, 69 (relating an anecdote in which one outside director who owned $500,000 worth of corporate stock stated: “If this company faces a challenge, I lose sleep at night”).
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San Diego Chargers Weekly Poll Question: How do you feel about the Tom Telesco hiring?
We've had nearly a week to digest the news. Let us know how you feel about it.
By Richard Wade@RichardWade Jan 14, 2013, 9:00am PST
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Kirby Lee-US PRESSWIRE
Tom Telesco, who had been with the Indianapolis Colts Organization since 1998, was named General Manager of the San Diego Chargers last week. He had been one of the key members of the Colts front office for over a decade most recently as the Vice President of Football Operations.
It had been reported widely that Jimmy Raye III would be promoted within. This was almost certainly because of Kevin Acee's report to that effect and it now seems that Acee's source was most likely Raye. Based on the results of last week's poll question, a majority of you are happy that the new General Manager of the Chargers isn't Raye. This week's question seeks to find out if you're happy with who will be assuming that role.
Telesco's role in the Colts' drafts of the last decade plus has already been broken down in detail by John Gennaro, so we won't rehash those details here. The short version is that they were very successful up until about the time the younger Polian took a bigger role in the process. Prior to that time, it is said that Telesco was the older Polian's number two.
It's impossible to say whether or not he'll be able to replicate his former boss' success, but there's certainly some amount of reason to be optimistic that he may be the right man to have pulling the trigger on draft day. We'll certainly find out soon enough, but for now vote in the poll and let us know in the comments how you feel about this decision.


Hokies go bowling…once again
Blacksburg, Va. – Dec. 11, 2017: The Camping World Bowl, previously referred to as the Russell Athletic Bowl, takes place on Dec. 28, 2017 in Orlando, Florida. The Hokies hold the trophy in their bowl memorabilia museum in Merryman Athletic Center on the Virginia Tech campus. Photo Credit: Mary Desmond
by Mary Desmond, Freddy Mesmer–
The Virginia Tech football team is preparing for a trip to Orlando, Florida to compete in the Camping World Bowl game. This is familiar territory for the Hokies.
“For us, it was really nice to be playing in the Camping World Bowl, which is where we played last year for the ACC Championship, so it was nice to kind of remember being there and doing this and that,” Danielle Bartelstein, senior director of Football Operations, said.
The Hokies also have been in Orlando for the Russell Athletic Bowl back in 2012 against Rutgers. The Hokies won this matchup 13-10 in overtime.
The Hokies have a significant history in Bowl games. They currently lead the NCAA with twenty-five consecutive bowl games. According to the Hokiesports website, the Hokies are one of only six programs in college football history to go to a bowl in at least 20 straight years (Nebraska, Michigan, Florida State, Alabama, Virginia Tech and Florida).
It started back in 1993 when the Hokies traveled to Shreveport, Louisiana where they took on the Hoosiers of Indiana. Virginia Tech downed the Hoosiers 43 to 20 at Independence Stadium. They have played at Independence stadium three times over the years. Once in 1984 and again most recently in 2015 for a matchup with Tulsa where the Hokies came out on top in a high scoring affair, 55-52.
During former head coach Frank Beamer’s time in Blacksburg, he led the Hokies to twenty-three straight bowl games. His overall bowl game record was 11-12. Beamer brought the Hokies to a total of five BCS Bowl games.
These games are the most highly rated of the bowl games and are typically played on New Year’s Day. This exposure helped shape Virginia Tech football into the program it is today. Retiring in 2015, he ended his coaching career in Shreveport with the win over Tulsa.
With the end of an era with Coach Beamer, the athletics department hired current head coach Justin Fuente. Fuente has led the Hokies to consecutive bowl games in his first two years at the helm. In his first season in 2016, Fuente found himself coaching a ten win team.
The Hokies capped off the 2016 regular season by winning the ACC Coastal division and playing Clemson for a shot at the ACC championship. The Hokies fell short of this goal but ended up pulling off a miraculous comeback in the 2016 Belk Bowl.
The Hokies go into the final game of the season hoping to finish strong. The team will play Oklahoma State on Dec. 28, 2017 on ESPN.
Author marymichaeladesmondPosted on December 18, 2017 Format ImageCategories Sports
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News Media Alliance tries to pump some life into the case for advertising with its members
By: Rick Edmonds
Even within the newspaper industry, there is talk that print advertising revenue remains in free fall and that print editions in many markets may disappear sometime in the next decade.
The industry's trade association, the News Media Alliance, begs to disagree. A new marketing book, "News Media Panorama," released today, tries to reframe the case for print and digital advertising in its member publications.
Historically, the newspaper ad buy was sold as having unequaled reach within communities. That is still on a list of benefits, but falls eighth among eight. Instead, the top two selling points are placing advertising alongside "trusted local journalism" and in a "brand-safe environment."
The book cites positive credibility studies from Gallup, Pew Research and Kantar Media, particularly findings documenting a big gap in trust in favor of print compared to social media.
As for the brand-safe environment, Rebecca Frank, the Alliance's vice president for research and insights, said in a phone interview, "We are still working through exactly how we define it." Clearly, though, the implication is that an advertising placement on social media could end up adjacent to raunchy material, hate speech or made-up news stories.
Putting trust in journalism as the top feature, Frank said, makes the point that readers "trust news media for their information about the world and for purchase decisions, too."
In her introduction to the 78-page market book, Frank puts it this way:
"When looking at the relationship between the news media industry and advertising, one often thinks of the monetary side of the partnership. But there’s more to it than that. The most valuable asset to an advertiser is a respected and reliable partner that their audience trusts. With news media, you get that respected partner."
The Alliance has opened its membership to digital-only sites, but newspapers still dominate. The Panorama book makes the point that newspapers now offer digital, video and audio options. That gives the news organizations growing ability to customize "creative and innovative advertising and marketing solutions."
And the news audience tends to be affluent and well-educated. Households of print readers out-earn the national average by $5,900 a year, according to Nielsen-Scarborough Research. And online news media readers enjoy an even larger advantage: $19,000 a year ($73,600 vs. $54,700).
Other sections of the book make more familiar points — that consumers pay particular attention to circulars and coupons in news media as they shop and that the publications, in one format or another, reach 136 million U.S. adult consumers in the course of a week.
The Alliance does not represent broadcasters (who have trade association of their own), and there are no comparisons in the book to the effectiveness of broadcast ads.
"We don't want to say (advertisers) need to choose one or the other," Frank said. "We do make the point that news media catch them (readers) at an important moment when they are consuming information."
My own take is that a big local advertiser — a car dealership, for instance — these days is typically going heavy into targeted digital ads and broadcast, with a supplement of some direct mail and print.
Frank joined the Aliance staff in November 2017, after working in public relations and at a business news aggregation site. Talking to publishers and advertisers and pulling together relevant research has been her main emphasis in the year since, she told me.
The American Press Institute is overseen by the alliance's foundation. It has taken the lead in audience and content research on such topics as matching topics to the particular areas of interest in a given community and refining an approach to adding paid digital subscribers.
So that cedes research on advertising and other area of revenue growth to Frank's operation.
Frank said that her hope is that this report will be a template for future ones — adding some statistics as they become available, for instance, on the brand safety issue.
Near the end of the book, the Alliance presents a pitch for two unorthodox advertising categories: voting and charitable giving. That is a bet on the future, Frank said, since millennials and the Parkland generation seem particularly attracted to issues and a reform agenda.
I posed the inevitable question, "Is print dead?" Frank replied, "The industry is changing and consumer behavior is changing. But while it is changing, it hasn't completely changed yet. So we want advertisers to consider all available channels."
Rick Edmonds
Rick Edmonds is media business analyst for the Poynter Institute where he has done research and writing for the last fifteen years. His commentary on…


Yakov Plyassunov
Deputy Head of the Department of Preventive Medicine in Russia ASI
Nutrisionist. Author of the Human Bio Upgrade System
Veaceslav Manolachi
Rector of the State University of Physical Education and Sport
Ilia Stambler
Director of Research and Development at Shmuel Harofe Geriatric Medical Center in Beer Yaakov, Israel
Ilia Stambler (born in Balti, Republic of Moldova), PhD, is Director of Research and Development at Shmuel Harofe Geriatric Medical Center in Beer Yaakov, Israel (Affiliated to Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University) and Chief Science Officer of “Vetek” (Seniority) – the Movement for Longevity and Quality of Life (Israel). He received his PhD at the Department of Science, Technology and Society, Bar Ilan University, Israel. His research has focused on the historical and social implications of aging and life extension research. He is also involved in mathematical modeling of aging and aging-related diseases. He is the author of the books A History of Life-extensionism in the Twentieth Century and Longevity Promotion: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. He is actively involved in advocacy for aging and longevity research, serving as the chairman of the Israeli Longevity Alliance and executive committee member of the International Society on Aging and Disease and International Longevity Alliance. His papers have appeared in Progress in Neurobiology, Aging and Disease, Cancer Detection and Prevention, Rejuvenation Research, Current Aging Science, Global Aging, Mechanisms of Ageing and Development, Frontiers in Genetics, Geroscience, Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging, Encyclopedia of Biomedical Gerontology, and other scientific journals and books.
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Ethiopian refugee children who fled the Tigray conflict wait in a line for a food distribution by Muslim Aid at the Um Raquba refugee camp in Sudan. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
Ethiopia’s leader must answer for the high cost of hidden war in Tigray
Simon Tisdall
Abiy Ahmed should hand back his Nobel peace prize over his actions in the breakaway region that have raised the spectre of famine again
Sun 24 Jan 2021 02.30 EST
Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s long-serving former foreign minister, was one of the foremost African diplomats of his generation. He was gunned down this month in Tigray by the armed forces of a lesser man – Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister and Nobel peace prize winner. Some suggest it was the Eritrean military, Abiy’s allies, who killed Seyoum, although their presence in Tigray is officially denied. The circumstances of his death remain murky.
As with much of the unreported, unchallenged murder and mayhem currently occurring in northern Ethiopia, murky is what Abiy prefers. When he ordered the army’s assault on the breakaway Tigray region in November, he blocked the internet, shut out aid agencies and banned journalists. It’s a conflict he claims to have won – but the emerging reality is very different. It’s a war fought in the shadows, with the outside world kept in the dark.
After humanitarian workers finally gained limited access this month, it was estimated that 4.5 million of Tigray’s 6 million people need emergency food aid. Hundreds of thousands are said to face starvation. The UN warns that Eritrean refugees in the Mai Aini and Adi Harush camps are in “desperate need of supplies” and harassed by armed gangs. Some are said to have been forcibly, illegally repatriated.
Access continues to be denied to two other camps, Shimelba and Hitsats, which have been set ablaze. Many of the camps’ residents are believed to have fled marauding Eritrean and Amhara militiamen. Satellite images published by UK-based DX Open Network reportedly show damage to 400 structures at Shimelba. Filippo Grandi, head of the UN refugee agency, points to “concrete indications of major violations of international law”.
There are persistent, unconfirmed reports of massacres, torture, rapes, abductions, and the looting or destruction of centuries-old manuscripts and artefacts across Tigray. Last week, EEPA, a Belgium-based NGO, described a massacre of 750 people at a cathedral in Aksum that reputedly houses the Ark of the Covenant. Ethiopian troops and Amhara militia are accused of the killings at the Church of St Mary of Zion, part of a UN World Heritage site. The report has not been independently verified.
Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed speaks during a question and answer session with lawmakers in Addis Ababa in November. Photograph: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters
Despite Abiy’s claims that the war is over and no civilians have been harmed, sporadic fighting continues, an analyst familiar with government thinking said. Thousands of people have died, about 50,000 have fled to Sudan, and many are homeless, sheltering in caves. Intentional artillery attacks have destroyed hospitals and health centres in an echo of the Syrian war, the analyst said.
Meeting this month in Mekelle, Tigray’s capital, aid workers complained Ethiopia’s government was still hindering relief efforts and demanded full access. “People are dying of starvation. In Adwa, people are dying while they are sleeping. [It’s] the same in other zones,” a regional administrator, Berhane Gebretsadik, was quoted as saying. But there has been scant response from Addis Ababa.
Official Ethiopian and Eritrean denials that Eritrean forces are operating in Tigray are contradicted by eyewitness accounts. Amid the murk, it seems clear Eritrea’s dictator-president, Isaias Afwerki, has made common cause with Abiy. The two met in Addis Ababa in October, shortly before the war was launched, to discuss the “consolidation of regional cooperation”.
Afwerki is an old enemy who runs a brutally repressive regime. But he shares Abiy’s hatred of the Tigrayan leadership that dominated the government of former prime minister Meles Zenawi during Ethiopia’s 20-year border war with Eritrea. Abiy, an Oromo from Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, made peace with Eritrea in 2018, ousted his Tigrayan rivals, and has been feuding with them ever since.
Further evidence of secret alliances comes from Somalia. The Somali Guardian reported this month that 2,500 Somali recruits were treated as “cannon fodder” after being sent to a military base in Eritrea for training, then deployed in Tigray with Eritrean forces. Dozens are reported to have been killed.
International scrutiny of Abiy’s Tigray war has been largely lacking. An exception is the EU, which has indefinitely suspended €88m in aid to Addis Ababa. “We receive consistent reports of ethnic-targeted violence, killings, looting, rapes, forceful return of refugees and possible war crimes,” Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, said.
The UN and EU warnings, coupled with the shocking murder of the internationally respected Seyoum Mesfin, may now bring closer scrutiny. I met Seyoum, a co-founder in 1975 of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, in Addis in 2008. He was a master diplomat. According to Alex de Waal, the Africa specialist, Seyoum was a skilled peacemaker in Rwanda and Sudan who “presided over the rehabilitation of Ethiopia’s international standing” after 1991.
Abiy now risks destroying that standing. “The circumstances of Seyoum’s killing aren’t clear. The Ethiopian government is not a reliable source of information. Eritrea – which may well have carried out the assassinations – is remaining silent. The official report that Seyoum and his colleagues ‘refused to surrender’ is opaque,” De Waal wrote.
He noted that the two other elderly Tigrayans killed alongside Seyoum, aged 71, were Abay Tsehaye, who had just had heart surgery, and Asmelash Woldeselassie, who was blind. This trio hardly posed a physical threat to heavily armed troops.
Abiy seems to have lost control of events. There is anger in Mekelle, where a puppet administration has been installed, about ongoing security issues, including rapes. The threat of rural famine looms large. In the mid-1980s, mass starvation in Ethiopia shocked the world. About 1 million people died. Those horrors were subsequently vanquished by decades of hard work.
To Abiy’s great shame, the spectre of famine now haunts Ethiopia again. The good work of the past is being undone. He should hand back his Nobel peace prize and answer for his actions in Tigray.
Conflict and arms


Fidus Investment Corporation Announces Fourth Quarter 2011 Portfolio Activity
EVANSTON, Ill., Feb. 6, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fidus Investment Corporation (Nasdaq:FDUS) ("Fidus"), a business development company, today announced that it made new investments totaling $40.3 million during the three months ended December 31, 2011. During the same period, Fidus received repayments totaling $17.9 million on outstanding loans.
Q4 2011 New Portfolio Investments:
ACFP Management, Inc. — Fidus invested $7.4 million in subordinated debt in ACFP, doing business as Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza, a restaurant chain specializing in coal-fired pizza and Italian Soul Food with locations in Florida and the Northeast.
Malabar International — Fidus invested $6.9 million in subordinated debt and preferred equity in Malabar, a supplier of ground support equipment for commercial and military aircraft.
Trantech Radiator Products, Inc. — Fidus invested $9.7 million in subordinated debt and common equity in Trantech, a supplier of radiators to the North American power transmission and distribution industry.
Q4 2011 Existing Portfolio Company Activity:
K2 Industrial Services, Inc. — Fidus refinanced its outstanding loan investment in K2 with $13.2 million of subordinated debt and preferred equity. K2 is a provider of industrial cleaning and coating services.
Medsurant Holdings, LLC — Fidus invested $3.0 million in subordinated debt with warrants in Medsurant, a provider of intraoperative monitoring technology and services.
This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements. Any such statements, other than statements of historical fact, are likely to be affected by other unknowable future events and conditions, including elements of the future that are or are not under Fidus's control, and that Fidus may or may not have considered; accordingly, such statements cannot be guarantees or assurances of any aspect of future performance. Actual developments and results are highly likely to vary materially from these estimates and projections of the future as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in Fidus's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such statements speak only as of the time when made, and Fidus undertakes no obligation to update any such statement now or in the future.


The Alamo Drafthouse, Fantastic Fest and fans: one year later
jgross@statesman.com
One year ago, the Alamo Drafthouse was embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal the beginnings of which went back nearly 20 years, a scandal that broke before and during Fantastic Fest, the chain’s signature film festival celebrating all things genre — think horror, crime, science fiction.
Here was a company, homegrown in liberal Austin, that prided itself on being progressive, the sort that held women-only screenings of “Wonder Woman,” with an owner and extremely public face who was a well-known Bernie Sanders supporter, and which presented itself as not only a high-quality entertainment experience but as a community you could join just by participating in this high-quality entertainment experience.
The more you went, the more like a community the Drafthouse seemed, a place for folks who might not fit in elsewhere, who identified with nerd culture and film fanaticism.
Over a week in 2017, many saw that sense of community vanish. Some fans took it personally and felt betrayed.
Recently, the American-Statesman spoke to fans, former fans and Alamo Drafthouse executives to discuss where the Drafthouse community is a year later, before the next Fantastic Fest opens Sept. 20.
Steph Beasley left the Alamo South Lamar in the middle of Fantastic Fest 2017 nearly in tears.
She didn’t expect to. Beasley was a longtime fan and supporter of the Drafthouse in general and Fantastic Fest in particular.
“I genuinely love the Drafthouse and feel like it is an important part of the fabric of Austin,” Beasley, an Austin native, said recently.
Beasley started covering the festival for the now-defunct website Austinist years ago, then returned each year as a fan.
“I enjoyed the insanity that (Alamo Drafthouse CEO and Fantastic Fest founder) Tim League somehow managed to conjure up every single year,” she said, “wackiness that you don’t experience at other film festivals.”
She and her husband went for the past couple of years; his sister would come down from Canada to join.
They had tickets for last year’s festival and went, somewhat reluctantly, as the scandal enveloping one of Austin’s most beloved businesses seemed to grow by the minute.
Beasley went to a screening of the movie “The Square,” a complex film by Ruben Östlund about art, civility and freedom of expression. During the film, a performance artist, played by actor Terry Notary, menaces people at a banquet, like an alpha male ape.
“At the end of this scene,” Beasley said, “he begins menacing this woman, and then drags her from her seat by her hair, and begins the act of rape, essentially.” Eventually, people in the banquet stand up and stop what is happening.
“It’s done really, really well,” Beasley said. “The movie raises the question, ‘How are you going to act as a decent member of society?’ It was a really smart screening for that particular year.”
That wasn’t what sent her out of the theater crying. After the screening, while folks stayed in their seats, the fest brought out Notary in character as the aggressive performance artist.
“Having seen him drag a woman by her hair in the movie and then presenting that character into a screening that was already a very tense experience during a fest that is also very tense. …” Beasley trailed off for a moment.
“I cried in the car on the way home, because I was so upset that they didn’t understand why that was inappropriate, and why that would make people really scared. I felt unsafe, and I’ve never felt unsafe at the Drafthouse. It felt like a massive betrayal of trust.”
Though she and her husband still patronize the Drafthouse, they are not returning to the fest. (Beasley also said cost was a factor. In 2017, superfan badges were $490; this year, they were $640. Fan badges, once $375, are now $520.)
“That’s the thing,” Beasley said. “I’m not the best ally because I still go to the Drafthouse all the time, and I still love it. It’s a huge part of my life.”
Here is a short version of the events:
In October 2016, Birth.Movies.Death editor Devin Faraci stepped down from the Alamo Drafthouse-owned magazine after allegations of sexual assault made by a fellow film critic. Faraci did not deny the allegations. He tweeted, “I do not remember this. I can only believe you and beg forgiveness for having been so vile.”
In September 2017, news emerged that the Drafthouse had resumed working with Faraci, who was writing internal copy for the organization. Fantastic Fest director of international programming Todd Brown resigned from the fest in protest. Faraci resigned again Sept. 14. Fox Searchlight announced that “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” a movie concerning the aftermath of a sexual assault, would not participate in the fest as planned.
League did not attend the fest, which ran Sept. 21-28.
As the 2017 festival progressed, Ain’t It Cool News founder and Fantastic Fest co-founder Harry Knowles was accused of groping incidents in 1999 and 2000 by Austinite Jasmine Baker in a story in the film publication IndieWire, charges Knowles denied. Ain’t It Cool dropped out as a sponsor of the festival and cut ties with Knowles.
In a Sept. 25 post on Facebook, a former Drafthouse employee named Jill Lewis said she was sexually harassed, groped and physically assaulted by a regular Drafthouse customer.
Baker’s and Lewis’ stories were amplified and discussed in a Feb. 8 story by Austin-based journalist Dan Solomon for the publication Splinter.
The American-Statesman reached out to Baker and Lewis for comment on this story; Baker did not respond to the request, and Lewis declined to comment.
On Sept. 26, League announced a new board of directors for the festival headed by Fantastic Fest executive director Kristen Bell, who had been with the company in various capacities since 2003.
Earlier this year, the Drafthouse rolled out an official code of conduct for anyone who attends a Drafthouse event, applicable to employees, vendors and patrons.
Fantastic Fest programming is more diverse than it has ever been. The festival’s board of directors is majority women. According to the Drafthouse, the board is designed to “further enhance and refine the experience of the festival and to provide the best, most open and inclusive environment for our family of film-loving fanatics.”
“Since the 2017 festival, Fantastic Fest has made developments around how it operates, with increased communication and transparency, gender diversity, workplace harassment training for all staff and volunteers and the further growth of the advisory board,” the board said in a statement. “Arts organizations play an important role in steering and providing a platform for cultural conversations and we take the responsibility seriously.”
Austin writer Amy Gentry is a former patron who says she feels as if she cannot go back. And she was a big fan.
“We bought our house a few blocks away from the place where there was going to be a new Drafthouse,” Gentry said. “It wasn’t even there yet.”
Her biggest question? “Why hasn’t Tim stepped down from his leadership role?” Gentry said. “There’s supposed to be these sort of new policies that are extremely robust, and I believe that there is a real good faith. Some people, and particularly from within, have been trying to make these changes. At the same time, those people are not Tim League. I guess I feel like if any other CEO made those kind of blunders repeatedly in the public eye, I just feel like that person should step down. I don’t think that person is sending a message that the culture there has changed.”
Gentry said she and her husband have attended films at local theaters in the past year, but not the Drafthouse.
“I wonder if they understand why people are still boycotting, why people are still angry,” Gentry said.
Did League ever consider stepping down?
“That’s a challenging question,” League said.
We’re sitting in a karaoke room upstairs at the Highball, next to the Alamo South Lamar, along with Amy Averett, senior director for culture and community at the Drafhouse. Averett has been with the company since 2011.
“I’ve dedicated most of my waking moments for the past 21 years to building this (company) and trying to build something special. The last thing I want to be is a detriment to that,” League said.
Averett jumped in to offer a staff perspective.
“I think even as we were sort of sloughing our way through early fall last year,” Averett said, “even the staff that were frustrated or upset about the situation were very clear that Tim is the person that’ll lead us out of it. He set the tone for other leaders within the company that this wasn’t just lip service and that we weren’t just sort of going through the motions but that we were really going to take a fundamental look at things.”
The Drafthouse shared an internal survey conducted using the Workify app, which allows employees to comment anonymously about their work environment. According to statistics provided by the Drafthouse, 1,325 staff members have completed comprehensive harassment training. Current employees (60 percent participated) consistently rank the Drafthouse as “excellent” at providing a safe, respectful work environment. The Statesman could not independently verify these numbers.
Though League and Averett said it was heavily debated and considered, ultimately, the Drafthouse decided not to include a sequence regarding abuse and harassment in their pre-show programming or a slide with their code of conduct. (Thanks to pre-show bumpers, if there’s one thing that all Drafthouse patrons know, it’s that you “don’t talk, text or arrive late.”)
“We did try out a few things just to sort of see how they felt,” League said, “We didn’t necessarily feel that that was appropriate. The more important thing for us was to train our staff to respond if there are people who are upset, whether it’s vendors, whether it’s staff, whether it’s customers.”
“Talking and texting, that’s annoying the person next to you, that’s distracting people from a movie,” Averett said. “But when you’re talking about things that go into the area of sexual harassment, sexual assault, treating somebody in a racist way, it’s so much more serious, and it’s so much more traumatic for the person that it happens to.
“I think what works about our ‘don’t talk, don’t text’ messaging is that we can be lighthearted about it,” she said. “But that’s just not the right tact for this kind of behavior. We would never want to treat this stuff with the same kind of lightness and playfulness that we would treat this stuff. That’s the main reason that it’s not on-screen.”
Both League and Averett emphasized that interactions between staff and customers are of primary concern.
“Any code of conduct complaint that comes in, I see, chief people officer (Drafthouse human resources head Tara Furiani) sees and Amy sees,” League said.
“What was missing was something that set clear intention when problems occurred between guests and staff or the guy who brings in the beer keg or the comedian that’s on stage,” Averett said. “I’m a female server and you’re a guest and you’re flirting with me in a heavy-handed way, I think that we’ve set a really clear line that she can come to a manager and say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable with this. I feel like this person’s harassing me,’ and we’re going to handle that.”
After speaking with League and Averett, I sat down with Fantastic Fest executive director Bell and FF creative director Evrim Ersoy.
Bell is also on the new board with former Drafthouse programmer Kier-la Janisse; shorts programming director Peter Kuplowsky; queer transmedia arts festival OUTsider director Curran Nault; “On Story” writer/producer Maya Perez; producer Suki-Rose Simakis; and actor Elijah Wood.
Regarding Fantastic Fest this year, it seems unlikely that you will see any extreme performance art a la “The Square,” nor are you likely to see a secret screening that involves soft-core porn, as happened last year with an American Genre Film Archive screening of Ed Wood’s final film, “Take It Out in Trade,” which Bell said was a mistake to show.
“We have held ourselves more accountable at what we are doing in terms of the choice of films and context,” Ersoy said. “If there is any film that we think might be more difficult for the audience, we have gotten an expert to write the blurb to contextualize the film.”
Fantastic Fest uses a series of icons in its promotional material to note a film’s content. Ersoy says they will be part of the signage during the fest.
“We have used the icons better and more extensively and are going to have them more visible around the venue, printed, so people know exactly what the film entails,” he said. “And we also make sure that any secret screenings, we still give good background or context to the people so that they know what they are going into.”
Bell said she saw the events of 2017 as an opportunity.
“This has always been a community that has been worth fighting for and a team worth fighting for,” Bell said. “There’s a lot of really powerful people outside of the top leadership that contributed to the decisions that are being made, and I think that that contributing effort gave me hope.”
Fantastic Fest has also started providing more diverse activities “that weren’t quite so alcohol-driven,” Bell said. Look for a podcast by the Switchblade Sisters, a VHS swap, a Leonard Maltin book signing and a panel called “Ghouls to the Front: Rethinking Women’s Horror Filmmaking.”
When I ask League what he would say to women who are not sure if they want to go to the Alamo because they don’t feel safe, he seems to answer the question at its most literal.
“Anybody that would come to me directly and express those concerns, then I would meet with them one-on-one and talk it through,” he said. “I’ve had, I don’t know how many, 50 of those conversations, and I’ll continue to do that. I want to be open and transparent and available, and if people have concerns then I want to be able to answer them, and have.”
I ask Bell the same thing.
“I completely understand,” she said. “I respect everyone’s decision to attend or not attend. I hope that our actions can shine through and that we can get to a place where they feel comfortable coming back again. And I think we have taken a lot of important steps in that direction.”
For some, the Drafthouse can’t come back from the events of the past year. Others continue to patronize it, but perhaps at an emotional distance.
But it is hard not to think that the most significant thing the Drafthouse sells is an idea of a very cool community, and it’s hard not to think of it in those terms.
“The Drafthouse is bigger than Tim, it’s bigger than Devin, and it’s bigger than all of the people who enabled them to make such poor choices and increase the harm that had already been done,” Beasley said. “I’m happy to support the hundreds of Austinites that still make their living through the Drafthouse, but I’ll remain skeptical of leadership until they are more open about the changes they have made.”
THE ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CODE OF CONDUCT


Sulzer – the unknown philosopher
05.12.2016 von Tom Leonhardt in Research, Science
At present, it’s hard to get hold of the writings of Swiss philosopher of the Enlightenment Johann Georg Sulzer or find much literature about his work. This is set to change in the coming years: Humboldt Research Award winner Professor Hans Adler from the University of Wisconsin–Madison is planning a complete edition of the works and letters of Sulzer together with Halle’s Humboldt Professor Elisabeth Décultot.
Hans Adler and Elisabeth Décultot are working on a complete edition of Sulzer’s writings. (Foto: Markus Scholz)
Hans Adler is one of the world’s leading experts in 18th century literature and has been studying the history of the Enlightenment for many years. The renowned German studies scholar received the Humboldt Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2016 in recognition of his research achievements to date. The award is endowed with 60,000 euros. Adler plans to use this money to fund several research stays at the University of Halle’s Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies (IZEA) to further his work on the complete edition of Sulzer’s works.
In contrast to many other authors of his day, Sulzer attempted to add a sensual dimension to the concept of the Enlightenment. “The Enlightenment has been too narrowly defined as a purely rational concept,” says Hans Adler. “But Sulzer knew that reason and intellect were not everything.” He advocated a holistic approach to education that focuses on aesthetics and the senses as well as rational thinking, as he believed that a broad-based education of this kind is essential in enabling people to develop into enlightened individuals. To this end, the philosopher also studied religion, poetry and education. Sulzer’s works also included travel reports, testimonies and extensive correspondence which he maintained with numerous academics and writers for more than 30 years.
The two scholars now want to collect all these works, and edit, annotate and categorise them in order to make them available to other researchers. This is an arduous project requiring painstaking attention to detail: “It really involves checking every comma. After all, our work will serve as a reference for all further work on Sulzer,” says Elisabeth Décultot.
Hans Adler (Foto: Markus Scholz)
The first volume of the edition – Sulzer’s overview of the current status of science, entitled “A Concise Notion of All Sciences and Other Aspects of Learning” – was already published in 2014. The other nine volumes will be published in quick succession in cooperation with an international team of editors.
Adler and Décultot hope their publications will give new momentum to the debate on the Enlightenment. They emphasise that it is not about rehabilitating Sulzer or to present him as a lost hero of the Enlightenment. But Adler is convinced that Sulzer’s ideas have much to contribute: “Our modern-day society is based on the foundations of the Enlightenment. If we continue to use the term Enlightenment in a too narrow sense, this is bound to lead to problems.” For this reason, a comprehensive understanding is needed of what makes for an enlightened, responsible individual.
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ResearchScience


2023: APC And PDP Are Just Business Ventures – Prof. Labdo
In preparation for the 2023 general elections, Prof. Umar Labdo has reportedly made it known that both the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP are just business ventures.
The Prof of the Faculty of Humanities, Maitama Sule University, Kano (formerly North-West University), made an outcry that the two dominant parties lacked meaningful manifestos to improve the lot of the common man.
According to him, “APC and PDP, as far as I am concerned, are two sides of the same coin and I have reasons to believe that this is what many of my fellow Kano compatriots think.”
He noted, ‘’The two parties lack real meaningful manifestos or programmes aimed at improving the lot of the people and are, therefore, no better than business ventures.”
He added, “This is evidenced by the frequent defection by members of both parties. The current crisis between the two factions of Ganduje and Ibrahim Shekarau is not a result of ideological differences or adherence to any principle. Therefore, the possibility of reconciliation between the two factions is real, but it may not affect the course of politics in the state.’’
He noted, “We used to have politics of service in Kano, service to the people and the common man. This is why our politics was known as the politics of Talakawa. Prior to the coming of the Europeans, Kano was known for its radicalism in politics and for its strong pro-people activism.”
He made it known, ‘’This trend had its genesis in the political thought of Abdullahi Dan Fodiyo, the most radical of the Sokoto jihad leaders. Abdullahi broke away from the Sokoto jihad during the revolution under the leadership of his brother, Usman Dan Fodio when he felt that the Jihad movement leaders were deviating from its original principles and objectives.’’
https://punchng.com/apc-pdp-mere-business-ventures-don/?utm_source=auto-read-also&utm_medium=web&amp
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