法律翻译 |《哥大商法评论》第2020卷第1期目录+摘要

译者 | 燕   然 吉林大学 LL.B.

一审 | 刘汉青 BNU LL.M.

二审 | 董   辰 中国政法大学硕士

编辑 | 于   佳 中国社会科学院大学硕士

         仲飞宇 西安外国语大学本科

责编 | 李   薇 浙江工商大学本科

A PROPERTY THEORY OF CORPORATE LAW

公司法的物权理论

作者：Robert Anderson IV

The dominant view of the corporation in legal scholarship is contractarian, one that sees the corporation as a “nexus of contracts” among the various suppliers of inputs to the business, such as investors, creditors, and employees. According to this view, the holders of common stock—those who are traditionally the primary focus of corporate law—are not the owners of the corporation, but just one of many contractual claimants. As a result, the corporation is a free-floating nexus of contracts with no property interests in the corporation itself or its assets. Thus, corporate law is seen as essentially a specialized branch of contract law.

法律学术界对公司的主流观点是合同主义的，这种观点将公司视为各种企业投入提供者（如投资者、债权人和雇员）之间的“合同纽带”。根据这种观点，普通股票的持有者——那些传统上是公司法主要焦点的人——并不是公司的所有者，而只是许多合同索赔人中的一个。因此，公司是一种自由浮动的契约关系，在公司本身或其资产中并没有财产利益。有鉴于此，公司法在本质上被视为合同法的一个专门分支。

The contractarian metaphor has largely persuaded the academy and much of the corporate law bench, evidenced by the regularity in which Delaware courts interpret charter documents as “contracts.” Courts and commentators alike regard corporate law as essentially a set of “off-the-rack” contractual default rules provided by the state. Yet the contractarian metaphor has struggled to account for some of the most fundamental features of corporate law. For example, the nexus of contracts view fails to adequately explain why fiduciary duties attach uniquely to shareholders and not to other contractual claimants on the corporation. Equally important, the nexus of contracts approach also fails to account for the many in rem features of the corporation that contract law could not easily replicate. There is a piece missing in the contractarian account of the corporation.

合同主义的隐喻在很大程度上说服了学术界和大部分的公司法法官，特拉华州法院经常将章程文件解释为“合同”的做法就证明了这一点。法院和评论家们都认为公司法本质上是一套由国家提供的“现成的”合同违约规则。然而，合同主义的隐喻却难以解释公司法的一些最基本的特征。例如，契约关系的观点未能充分解释为什么信托义务只适用于股东，而不适用于公司的其他合同索赔人。同样重要的是，契约关系的观点也未能说明合同法难以复制的公司的许多物权特征。在关于公司的契约论述拼图中，仍然存在缺失的那一块。

This Article argues that property law provides the missing piece of the contractarian puzzle in demarcating the boundaries of corporate law and explaining the distinctive features of it. In the property theory, the corporation is an ownership structure—a device for turning a messy set of in personam claims into an orderly package of in rem property rights, called “shares.” The in rem structure depersonalizes these rights, allowing them to be divided and transferred without contractual assent and without entangling the personal attributes of the holder. The key to the proprietary nature of this ownership interest is the residual control—voting rights—that solidify the status of common stock as a property interest rather than a contractual interest.

本文认为，物权法在划定公司法的边界和解释其显著特征方面补全了合同主义拼图的缺失部分。在物权理论中，公司是一种所有权结构，一种将一组混乱的人身债权转化为有序的对物财产权组合（即“股份”）的工具。物权结构使这些权利去人格化，使得它们在没有合同同意的情况下被分割和转让，而不会与持有人的个人属性纠缠在一起。这种所有权权益专有性质的关键是剩余控制权——投票权——它巩固了普通股票作为一种财产权益而不是合同权益的地位。

The property theory’s assertion that claims on the corporation are a mix of property and contract rights provides traction in otherwise slippery areas of corporate law. If there is a line to be drawn between contract and property, this dividing line identifies the boundaries of distinctively corporate law from contract law. Accordingly, the rationale for shareholder-only fiduciary duties is not primarily that shareholders are the residual claimants in the economic sense, but that they have a residual control right constituting an ownership interest unique among corporate claimants. The property theory of corporate law best explains many features of corporate law and clarifies otherwise murky line drawing exercises in defining the scope of fiduciary duties.

物权理论断言，对公司的债权是财产权利和合同权利的混合体，这为公司法中其他棘手的领域提供了指引。如果要在合同和财产之间划一条线，那么这条分界线就确定了公司法与合同法的界限。因此，信托责任只针对股东的理由主要不是股东是经济意义上的剩余索赔人，而是因为他们拥有构成公司求偿人特有的所有权权益的剩余控制权。公司法的物权理论最好地解释了公司法的许多特征，并澄清了在界定信托责任范围时原本模糊的划线问题。

原文链接：

https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/CBLR/article/view/7157/3827

LONG-TERM BIAS

长期偏见

作者：Michal Barzuza and Eric Talley

An emerging consensus in certain legal, business, and scholarly communities maintains that corporate managers are pressured unduly into chasing short-term gains at the expense of superior long-term prospects. The forces inducing managerial myopia are easy to spot, typically embodied by activist hedge funds and Wall Street gadflies with outsized appetites for current quarterly earnings. Warnings about the dangers of “short termism” have become so well established, in fact, that they are now driving changes to mainstream practice as courts, regulators and practitioners fashion legal and transactional constraints designed to insulate firms and managers from the influence of investor short-termism. This Article draws on academic research and a series of case studies to advance the thesis that the emergent folk wisdom about short-termism is in-complete. A growing literature in behavioral finance and psychology now provides sound reasons to conclude that corporate managers often fall prey to long-term bias—excessive optimism about their own long-term projects. We illustrate several plausible instantiations of such biases using case studies from three prominent companies where managers have arguably succumbed to a form of “long-termism” in their own corporate stewardship. Unchecked, long-termism can impose substantial costs on investors that are every bit as damaging as short-termism. Moreover, we argue that long-term managerial bias sheds considerable light on the paradox of why short-termism evidently persists among supposedly sophisticated financial market participants: shareholder activism—even if unambiguously myopic—can provide a symbiotic counter-bal-last against managerial long-termism. Without a more definitive understanding of the interaction between short-and long-term biases, then, policymakers should be cautious about embracing reforms that focus solely on half of the problem.

某些法律、商业和学术界正在形成的共识认为，公司经理受到了不适当的压力，以牺牲卓越的长期前景为代价来追求短期收益。诱发管理层短视的力量很容易被发现，这通常体现在激进的对冲基金和华尔街“牛虻”身上，他们对当前的季度收益有着巨大的欲望。事实上，关于“短期主义”危险的警告已经非常成熟，以至于它们现在正在推动主流做法的改变。这是因为法院、监管机构和从业人员制定了法律和交易限制，旨在使公司和管理人员免受投资者短期主义的影响。本文通过学术研究和一系列的案例研究，提出了“关于短期主义的新兴民间智慧并不完整”这一观点。现在，行为金融学和心理学方面越来越多的文献提供了充分的理由，使我们可以得出结论：企业管理者往往会成为长期偏见的牺牲品，其对自己的长期项目过度乐观。我们通过对三家知名公司的案例研究来说明这种偏见的几个合理的例证，在这些公司中，经理们可以说在自己的公司管理中屈服于一种“长期主义”的形式。如果不加以控制，长期主义会给投资者带来巨大的成本，其破坏性并不亚于短期主义。此外，我们认为，长期管理偏见在很大程度上揭示了为什么短期主义在所谓老练的金融市场参与者中仍明显持续存在的悖论：股东激进主义——即使是显而易见的短视——也可以提供一种共生的反击，以对抗管理者的长期主义。因此，在对短期和长期偏见之间的相互作用没有更明确的认识之前，政策制定者应该谨慎看待那些片面对待问题的改革。

（图片来源于网络）

“[H]ere we are. . .[w]hen you look at what has happened, what did you do wrong? I think that—well, one, I don’t think the story has yet played out.. . . A lot of tech turnaround adds we do take five, six, seven years. . . .” Marissa Mayer, March 10, 2016

“瞧好了……当你看到所发生的事情时，你觉得你做错了什么？首先，我不认为这个故事已经划上了句点。我们所做的许多技术改造都需要五年、六年乃至七年的时间。Marissa Mayer，2016年3月10日。

“My opinion is that, philosophically, I’m doing the right thing in trying to shake up some of these managements. It’s a problem in America today that we are not nearly as productive as we should be.” Carl Icahn, October 22, 2014

“我的观点是，从哲学上讲，我正在做正确的事情，在试图改变其中一些管理层。我们的生产力远不如我们所应该达到的水平，这在今天的美国是一个问题。Carl Icahn，2014年10月22日。”

原文链接：

https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/CBLR/article/view/7158/3828

RECONSIDERING CREDITOR GOVERNANCE IN A TIME OF FINANCIAL ALCHEMY

在“金融炼金术时代”对债权人治理问题的再思考

作者：Jeremy McClane

For many years corporate lenders have been a crucial force in the boardroom, providing a check on management and con-tributing to firm governance. However, as this Article documents, lenders’ influence has receded in recent years for a large and important class of corporate borrowers. The culprit is a familiar one in a less familiar guise: the sale of loans by originating banks for securitization—like that which gained notoriety with pre-financial crisis mortgage-backed securities, but now are deployed in the market for corporate loans. As this Article points out, the shift from relationship lending to arms-length securitization has the potential to intensify moral hazard, leading banks to provide less monitoring for their highly securitized clients. Recent data supports this narrative of debt governance dereliction with potentially enormous consequences: it heralds the disappearance of an important source of fiscal discipline and governance at a moment when U.S. corporations carry more debt than at any time in history (totaling half of U.S. gross domestic product), and an economic crisis threatens to expose companies whose debt has been poorly managed. 

多年来，公司贷款人一直是董事会中的关键力量，其对管理层进行制衡，并为公司治理做出贡献。然而，正如本文所记录的那样，近年来，对于一大批重要的公司借款人来说，贷款人的影响力已经开始消退。罪魁祸首是一个伪装在陌生皮囊下的老熟人：发起银行出售贷款用于证券化——其就像金融危机前的抵押贷款支持证券那样臭名昭著，但现在被应用在公司贷款市场中。正如本文所指出的那样，从关系贷款到公平证券化的转变有可能加剧道德风险，导致银行为其高度证券化的客户提供更少的监督。最近的数据支持这种关于债务治理失职，且可能会产生巨大后果的说法：它预示着财政纪律和治理的一个重要来源的消失，而此时美国公司的债务比历史上任何时候都多（占美国国内生产总值的一半），经济危机有可能暴露出那些债务管理不善的公司。

（图片来源于网络）

This Article presents a theoretical and empirical examination of the dramatic change in creditor corporate governance and its implications. It shows how the diminishment of lenders’ role in governance is a predictable result of a confluence of forces in the financial markets, in particular, the use of structured finance to securitize loans, which in turn has driven a lending market with diminishing checks on borrower profligacy. It also shows how this new market is weakening governance norms in ways that are harmful to borrowing companies, lenders, and society as a whole.

本文对债权人公司治理的巨大变化及其影响进行了理论和实证研究。它表明，贷款人在治理中作用的减弱是金融市场各种力量交织在一起的可预见的结果，特别是利用结构性金融将贷款证券化，而这反过来又推动了一个对借款人的挥霍行为的制约作用越来越弱的贷款市场。它还表明，这个新市场正在以对借款公司、贷款人和整个社会有害的方式削弱治理规范。

The Article makes two contributions to the literature. First, it empirically documents the decline of lenders’ corporate governance interventions, cataloging original data on all borrower loan covenant violations—a primary mechanism by which lenders intervene in governance—from 2008 through 2018. Second, although many scholars have written about lenders’ role in corporate governance and securitization separately, this Article brings the two together. It thereby adds a missing com-ponent to an important literature by showing how corporate governance and the financial system affect each other, and pro-posing solutions to bolster both.

本文对文献有两点贡献。首先，它实证地记录了贷款人公司治理干预的下降，对2008年至2018年所有借款人违反贷款契约的原始数据进行了编目，这是贷款人干预治理的主要机制。其次，尽管许多学者分别写过贷款人在公司治理和证券化中的作用，但本文将两者结合在一起。因此，本文通过展示公司治理和金融体系如何相互影响，并提出支持两者的解决方案，为重要文献增加了一个缺失的补充部分。

原文链接：

https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/CBLR/article/view/7159/3829

FINALITY, FAIRNESS, AND CONSISTENCY: 

STRIKING A BALANCE IN ICSID ANNULMENT PROCEEDINGS CONCERNING ARBITRATOR BIAS

终局性、公平性和一致性：

在ICSID关于仲裁员偏见的撤销进程中寻求平衡

作者：Andrew T. Connery

A unique feature of the ICSID framework is the built-in control mechanism that allows parties to seek annulment of an otherwise final award via Article 52 of the Convention. Unlike arbitration in other contexts, this mechanism is the exclusive means for review of an ICSID award. While scholars and practitioners regard this as one of the most innovative features of the ICSID regime, many of the grounds for annulment remain underdeveloped. In particular, annulment committees have applied the “serious departure from a fundamental rule of procedure” ground inconsistently.

ICSID框架的一个独特之处在于内置的控制机制，其允许各方通过《公约》第52条寻求撤销原本是最终裁决的裁决。与其他情况下的仲裁不同，该机制是审查ICSID裁决的唯一手段。虽然学者和从业人员认为这是ICSID制度中最具创新性的特征之一，但许多撤销的理由仍未得到充分的发展。特别是，撤销委员会对“严重偏离基本程序规则”这一理由的适用并不一致。

Especially because challenges to arbitrators can occur during the appointment phase, during the arbitration itself, or during annulment proceedings, the proper standard for determining bias remains convoluted. Accordingly, this Note examines how different approaches to assessing arbitrator bias unfold in annulment proceedings applying the “fundamental rule of procedure” ground. It argues that these differences have con-tributed to a greater number of unpredictable outcomes, under-mining a central purpose of ICSID. Two recent decisions—the Azurix and EDF annulments—highlight the divergent approaches ad hoc committees have taken in addressing allegations of bias. This Note concludes by identifying the EDF approach as the most appropriate standard of review and discusses possible routes for resolving differences in ICSID annulment decisions.

特别是由于对仲裁员的质疑可能发生在指定阶段、仲裁期间或撤销进程期间，确定偏见的适当标准仍然令人费解。因此，本说明探讨了在适用“基本程序规则”理由的撤销进程中如何展开评估仲裁员偏见的不同方法。它认为，这些差异导致了更多不可预测的结果，破坏了ICSID的核心目标。最近的两项裁决——Azurix案和EDF案的无效裁决——突显了特设委员会在处理偏见指控时采取的不同方法。本说明最后将EDF案中的方法确定为最合适的审查标准，并讨论了解决ICSID撤销裁决中的分歧的可行途径。

原文链接：

https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/CBLR/article/view/7160/3830

（图片来源于网络）

THE TREACHEROUS LANDSCAPE FOR FOREIGN G-SIBS:

 THE IHC FRAMEWORK AND FINANCIAL STABILITY

外国系统重要性银行（G-SIBS）的危险环境：中间控股公司（IHC）框架和金融稳定

作者：Mackenzie Humble

In 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act restructured the regulatory regime for financial institutions in the United States by mandating corporate governance reforms and requiring that firms maintain high levels of high-quality capital reserves in their U.S. legal entities. Likely the most consequential of the statute’s provisions was that which authorized Regulation YY, a landmark regulation that transformed capital planning and risk management processes among financial institutions in the United States. Along with implementing enhanced prudential standards for the U.S. operations of large, complex financial institutions, Regulation YY altered the corporate structure of foreign banking organizations(“FBOs”) by requiring large foreign banking institutions to establish a new legal entity, called an intermediate holding company (“IHC”). Put simply, IHCs were created to reorganize and capture, in one umbrella legal entity, all non-branch U.S. operations of FBOs. Further, to ensure robust, localized oversight of U.S. operations, each IHC is required to establish their own board of directors and risk committee, separate and apart from the board and committees of the broader organization. IHCs are also required to comply with both the capital and leverage ratio requirements applied to similarly large domestic financial institutions, and the programmatic requirements associated with firms of that size (resolution planning, CCAR, CLAR).

2010年，《多德-弗兰克华尔街改革和消费者保护法案》通过强制要求公司治理改革并要求公司在其美国法律实体中保持高水平的高质量资本储备，重组了美国金融机构的监管制度。该法规中最重要的条款可能是授权条例YY，这是一项具有里程碑意义的法规，改变了美国金融机构的资本规划和风险管理流程。除了对大型复杂金融机构在美国的业务实施强化的审慎标准外，YY条例还改变了外国银行组织（FBO）的公司结构，要求大型外国银行机构创建一个新的法律实体，称为中间控股公司（IHC）。简而言之，中间控股公司（IHC）的建立是为了在一个总的法律实体中重组和获取外国银行组织（FBO）的所有非分支机构的美国业务。此外，为了确保对美国业务进行强有力的本地化监督，每个中间控股公司（IHC）都必须创建自己的董事会和风险委员会，与更广泛组织的董事会和委员会分开。中间控股公司（IHC）还必须遵守适用于类似的大型国内金融机构的资本和杠杆比率要求，以及与这种规模的公司相关的计划要求（决议计划、CCAR、CLAR）。

There is another regulation, though, that when coupled with the far-reaching implications of Regulation YY has disparately impacted foreign banking organizations. That regulation is Regulation W, a longstanding regulation that limits the amount of intracompany transactions banking organizations can engage in. Following the enactment of Dodd-Frank, Regulation W was amended in several ways which limited specifically the types of transactions that FBOs often engage in with their affiliates to manage their liquidity risk and to absorb liquidity shocks. The post-crisis changes made to Regulation W have already begun to be rolled back by U.S. regulators, however there has not yet been a detailed analysis of how specifically the interaction between Regulation YY and Regulation W undermines global financial stability.

然而，还有另一项规定，当它与YY条例的深远影响结合在一起时，将对外国银行组织（FBO）产生不同程度的影响。这条规定就是W条例。这是一项长期存在的法规，其限制了银行组织可以参与的公司内部交易金额。在《多德-弗兰克法案》颁布后，W条例以多种方式进行了修订，特别是限制了外国银行组织（FBO）经常与其附属机构进行的交易类型，以管理其流动性风险并吸收流动性冲击。危机后对W条例所做的修改已经开始被美国监管机构撤销，但对YY条例和W条例之间的互动如何具体破坏全球金融稳定，尚未进行详细分析。

（图片来源于网络）

The specific aim of this Note is to evaluate whether Regulation YY and Regulation W have destabilized the global financial system. Institutions’ 2018 and 2019 CCAR results will be the lens through which the impact of the regulations is evaluated. Specifically, we look at both institutions’ Tier 1 capital ratios and Tier 1 leverage ratios to assess how specifically the IHCs have positioned their liquid capital and adjusted their business model in response to Regulation YY reorganization. Ultimately, we conclude that the interaction between Regulation YY and the revised Regulation W has dramatically fragmented the global flow of capital among FBOs. Regulation YY’s IHC reorganization mandate largely cabins foreign banks’ ability to absorb liquidity shocks through their organizations—a result that may pose a serious threat to global financial stability. That is, the fundamental disruption of institutions’ ability to funnel liquidity to their network of legal entities around the world raises a significant concern regarding their resiliency during periods of stress, particularly for those systemically important firms who experienced pervasive liquidity issues in the most recent crisis.

本说明的具体目的是评估YY条例和W条例是否破坏了全球金融体系的稳定。机构的2018年和2019年的CCAR结果将成为评估这些法规影响的独特视角。具体来说，我们将查看两个机构的一级资本比率和一级杠杆比率，以评估中间控股公司（IHC）如何具体定位其流动资本并调整其业务模式以应对YY条例的重组。最终，我们得出的结论是，YY条例和修订后的W条例之间的相互作用极大地分割了外国银行组织（FBO）之间的全球资本流动。YY条例的中间控股公司（IHC）重组任务在很大程度上遏制了外国银行通过其组织吸收流动性冲击的能力，而这一结果可能对全球金融稳定构成严重威胁。也就是说，机构向其世界各地的法律实体网络输送流动性的能力受到了根本性的破坏，这引起了人们对其在压力时期的复原力的严重关切，特别是对于那些具有系统重要性且在最近的危机中经历了普遍的流动性问题的公司。

原文链接：

https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/CBLR/article/view/7161/3831

BREAKING THE SILENT TREATMENT: THE CONTRACTUAL ENFORCEABILITY OF NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS FOR WORKPLACE SEXUAL HARASSMENT SETTLEMENTS

打破沉默：

工作场所性骚扰保密协议的合同可执行性

作者：Jingxi Zhai

The dramatic revelations of the #MeToo movement have ex-posed the extent to which workplace sexual harassment is endemic and concealed across different industries. #MeToo has also shed light on the use of non-disclosure agreements (“NDAs”) by harassers to conceal their pattern of repeated mis-conduct. While there has been strong public condemnation of NDAs in the wake of the #MeToo movement, there is limited case law on the question of whether contracts such as NDAs are legally enforceable when used to settle claims of sexual harassment that do not amount to criminal conduct.

#MeToo运动的戏剧性披露，暴露了工作场所性骚扰在不同行业中的普遍性和隐蔽性。#MeToo运动还揭示了骚扰者利用保密协议（NDA）来掩盖他们屡次发生的不当行为的模式。虽然在#MeToo运动之后，公众对保密协议（NDA）进行了强烈的谴责，但关于保密协议（NDA）等合同在用于解决不构成犯罪行为的性骚扰索赔时是否具有法律可执行性的问题，判例法却是有限的。

While federal and state legislatures continue to debate the benefits of legislating against such agreements, this Note analyzes the viability of the common law public policy analysis to hold such NDAs unenforceable. Given that most states do not have specific statutes directly addressing sexual harassment NDAs, courts should look to a broad range of state legislation as relevant in considering the public policy interests counseling toward finding such NDAs unenforceable. Accordingly, this Note analyzes public policy considerations derived from three types of state law: restrictions on the use of NDAs in instances of sexual harassment, prohibitions of workplace harassment, and limitations on the concealment of public hazards.

当联邦和州立法机构继续讨论通过立法反对此类协议的好处时，本说明分析了基于普通法公共政策分析使得此类保密协议（NDA）无法执行的可行性。鉴于大多数州没有直接针对性骚扰保密协议的具体法规，法院在考虑公共政策利益以认定此类保密协议不可执行时，应将广泛的州立法作为相关的考虑因素。因此，本说明分析了从三种类型的州法律中得出的公共政策考虑：对在性骚扰情况下使用保密协议（NDA）的限制、禁止工作场所性骚扰以及限制隐瞒公共危害的行为。

Even in states without any such legislation, this Note urges state courts, when determining whether to enforce sexual harassment NDAs, to more actively weigh the benefits of enforcing the contractual will of private parties against potential harms to the public welfare. Workplace sexual harassment is a public policy issue that is worsened by the continued use of NDAs. In concealing workplace sexual misconduct, NDAs prevent society, through private and state actors, from addressing the problem itself and threaten public safety and welfare by allowing offenders to potentially harm future workers. Without NDAs as protection, companies will be exposed to reputational damage and potential shareholder litigation when sexual harassment news becomes public knowledge. Indeed, this threat of future reputational harm could be an effective way to encourage corporations to change their internal policies relating to workplace misconduct.

即使在没有任何此类立法的州，本说明也敦促州法院在决定是否执行性骚扰保密协议时，更积极地权衡执行私人当事方合同意愿的好处与对公共福利的潜在损害。工作场所的性骚扰是一个公共政策问题，它因继续使用保密协议（NDA）而变得更加恶化。在隐瞒工作场所不端性行为时，保密协议通过私人和州行为者阻止社会对问题本身加以解决，并通过允许犯罪者潜在地伤害未来的工人而对公共安全和福利构成了威胁。如果没有保密协议（NDA）作为保护，当性骚扰的新闻被公众所知时，公司将面临声誉受损和潜在的股东诉讼。事实上，这种对未来声誉损害的威胁可能是鼓励公司改变其与工作场所不当行为有关的内部政策的有效方式。

原文链接：

https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/CBLR/article/view/7162/3832