Those in favor of out of court alternative dispute mechanisms may look at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA) track record of arbitration as a move in the positive direction to bypass the congested court system to hasten resolution of securities disputes. Though this may be the story that a facial glance at the issue…
Month: November 2014
Testing Sarbanes-Oxley: The American Realty Capital Properties Scandal
American Realty Capital Properties’ stock price plunged nearly 20% on October 29th after the company disclosed that it had intentionally left mistakes in its financial statement uncorrected. 1 By November 3rd, less than a week later, American Realty Capital Properties’ shares had plummeted nearly 37% since the announcement. 2 According to Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, an independent…
Think Before You Snap
Snapchat is a photo messaging system that consumers download as an application to their smart phone or device to send messages through photographs, videos, or text that the original sender can edit and determine the length of time the message can be viewed to recipients.1 The application is marketed to consumers to ensure that once…
Spoofing: The Newest White Collar Crime
A day after Halloween, federal prosecutors spooked traders nationwide. In the first criminal prosecution of its kind, Michael Coscia was charged with spoofing.1 The indictment claims that he manipulated the futures market through two computer programs that he designed.2 Mr. Coscia is a high frequency trader, and the prosecution comes at a time when authorities…
Lyft Versus Uber: The Competition Revs Up
The fierce competition between rival ride-sharing services Lyft and Uber is revving up for a battle in the courtroom. In a complaint filed with the San Francisco Superior Court on November 4, 2014, Lyft alleges that former Chief Operating Officer Travis VanderZanden breached his confidentiality agreement and fiduciary duties when he joined Uber after leaving…
Impact Investment
Impact investment, also known as the “double bottom line,” is a business strategy in which investors direct funds to for-profit companies which will further some social good, the second bottom line.1 Though this seems antithetical to traditional investment models, comprehensive studies have shown that at the least impact investments are currently performing as well as…
Starbucks to Purchase Control of Own Stores in Japan
Starbucks launched its first overseas store in 1995 in Tokyo, Japan. As the world’s third largest economy, the move to Japan proved to be very successful for the company and they now operate over 1,000 stores in the country1. What is more surprising than the company’s huge success in Japan is the fact that they…
Bitcoin Regulation
Recently, Mark Wetjen, a commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal calling for the regulation of the digital currency, Bitcoin.1 Citing the need of merchants to hedge exposure to fluctuations in Bitcoin’s value, trading platforms beginning to list Bitcoin derivatives contracts, its financial innovative capabilities, and the…
The Benefits and Complications of Big Data
The type of significant decisions that drive businesses, big and small, in their attempts to better react to customers’ needs have increasingly been driven by big data. Big data refers to “the recent wave of electronic information produced in greater volume by a growing number of sources (i.e., not just data collected by a particular…
Transfer Pricing and Tax Consequences
The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. 1 Hence it is no surprise that corporations may try to avoid recognizing income in order to avoid paying taxes on that income. One of the ways a multinational corporation can achieve this result is by manipulating their transfer prices with foreign affiliated…