The Deal
Saturday, July 4, 
4:05 pm

Talk of Tulane: Our correspondent in his native habitat

  Share     E-Mail    Discussion    Print Story

glass_of_chardonnay.jpgWe found ourselves in a meditative mood Friday afternoon in New Orleans, a state of mind no doubt fueled by a lunch of lemonfish washed down with a nice Chardonnay at Restaurant August. One of the things we meditated on was Marty Lipton's comment at the Tulane Corporate Law Institute Friday morning that U.S. shareholder democracy will have a hard time competing with the state corporatism of Russia, China and other emerging economies.

Continue reading below

Also on Dealscape

Lipton made the remark at the conclusion of a panel reviewing the last 20 years of M&A. He could have said much the same thing about Japan in the late 1980s, when Chalmers Johnson could write a widely praised book entitled "Miti and the Japanese Miracle," referring to the close nexus between business and government in that country. The sharp contrast between the stable Japanese corporation, oriented toward the long term, and its U.S. counterpart, hassled by Carl Icahn, Michael Milken and their ilk to the great detriment of the U.S. economy, was conventional wisdom at the time, though it didn't survive long into the 1990s as Japan's stock market and economy cratered, never fully to recover.

And (we swear we had only one glass of wine) we also pondered the similarities between Louisiana and Russia, both oil-rich states in which businesses have often found themselves at the mercy of rapacious politicians, some of whom masquerade as businessmen. That hasn't turned out too well for either polity.

Perhaps a good lunch caused an overly Panglossian self-satisfaction to pass over us, but the history that Lipton and Joe Perella spent the morning reviewing -- and that both men had a hand in shaping -- suggests that the increasingly shareholder-driven corporate governance of American companies at the very least hasn't hurt the U.S. economy and may in fact have been a competitive advantage. And now, perhaps, another glass of Chardonnay. - David Marcus

See Dealscape's additional coverage of the Tulane Corporate Law Institute in New Orleans





Post a comment





The Deal Pipeline

Deal Video


Inside The Deal: SecondMarket's Silbert on helping VCs achieve pre-IPO liquidity for their investments.


More video...

Crisis On Wall Street
Technology
Deals of The Decade

Community

Industry Insight

Potential FBAR filing changes

Offshore hedge funds and private equity funds may be 'financial accounts' for which investors must file FBAR.


Industry Insight

Finger on the pulse

Things PE investors should keep in mind to maintain the support and commitment from their lenders and limited partners.


Industry Insight

Closing the tough deal

Terms and structures now used to get deals done are post-closing purchase price payments, earnouts, simultaneous acquisitions, rollups, payments in kind and joint ventures.


footspacer.jpg footspacer.jpg footspacer.jpg footspacer.jpg footspacer.jpg


©Copyright 2009, The Deal, LLC. All rights reserved. Please send all technical questions, comments or concerns to the Webmaster.