Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2002
Abstract
This Article takes the occasion of the simultaneous collapse of the high technology stock market and the failure of the dot-coin startups, along with the subsequent retrenchment of the venture capital business, to examine the law and economics of downside arrangements in venture capital contracts. The subject matter implicates core concerns of legal and economic theory of the firm. Debates about the separation of ownership and control, relational investing, takeover policy, the law and economics of debt capitalization, and bankruptcy reform, all grapple with the downside problem of controlling and terminating unsuccessful managers for the benefit of outside debt and equity investors (and the related upside problem of incentivizing effective but fallible managers). The factors motivating these debates also bear on venture capital contracting. But venture capital presents a special puzzle for solution. Convertible preferred stock is the dominant financial contract in the venture capital market, at least in the United States. This contrasts with other contexts in corporate finance, where preferred stock is thought to be a financing vehicle long in decline. The only mature firms that finance with preferred, which once was ubiquitous in American capital structures, tend to be firms in regulated industries having little choice in the matter. Tax rules favoring debt finance provide the primary explanation for preferred's decline. But many corporate law observers would suggest dysfunctional downside contracting as a concomitant cause. Simply, preferred performs badly on the downside, where senior security contracts supposedly are at their most effective. Preferred stockholders routinely have been victimized in distress situations by opportunistic issuers who strip them of their contract rights, transferring value to the junior equity holders who control the firm's management. The cumulation of bad experiences adds impetus to a wider trend in favor of debt as the mode of senior participation.
Publication Citation
100 Mich. L. Rev. 891-945 (2002)
Scholarly Commons Citation
Bratton, William W., "Venture Capital on the Downside: Preferred Stock and Corporate Control" (2002). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 51.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/51
Comments
Reprinted from Michigan Law Review, March 2002, Vol. 100, No. 5. Copyright 2002 by William W. Bratton.