A Transactional Genealogy of Scandal: from Michael Milken to Enron to Goldman Sachs
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law 2013 A Transactional Genealogy of Scandal: From Michael Milken to Enron to Goldman Sachs William W. Bratton University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Adam J. Levitin Georgetown University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Accounting Commons, Accounting Law Commons, Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons, Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Business Organizations Law Commons, Corporate Finance Commons, Law and Economics Commons, and the Securities Law Commons Repository Citation Bratton, William W. and Levitin, Adam J., "A Transactional Genealogy of Scandal: From Michael Milken to Enron to Goldman Sachs" (2013). Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law. 1515. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1515 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law by an authorized administrator of Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A TRANSACTIONAL GENEALOGY OF SCANDAL: FROM MICHAEL MILKEN TO ENRON TO GOLDMAN SACHS WILLIAM W. BRATTON* ADAM J. LEVITIN† ABSTRACT Three scandals have reshaped business regulation over the past thirty years: the securities fraud prosecution of Michael Milken in 1988, the Enron implosion of 2001, and the Goldman Sachs “ABACUS” enforcement action of 2010. The scandals have always been seen as unrelated. This Article highlights a previously unnoticed transactional affinity tying these scandals together—a deal structure known as the synthetic collateralized debt obligation involving the use of a special purpose entity (“SPE”). The SPE is a new and widely used form of corporate alter ego designed to undertake transactions for its creator’s accounting and regulatory benefit. The SPE remains mysterious and poorly understood despite its use in framing transactions involving trillions of dollars and its prominence in foundational scandals. The traditional corporate alter ego was a subsidiary or affiliate with equity control. The SPE eschews equity control in favor of control through preset instructions emanating from transactional documents. In theory, these instructions are complete or very close thereto, making SPEs a real-world manifestation of the “nexus of * Deputy Dean and Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor of Law; Co-Director, Institute for Law & Economics, University of Pennsylvania Law School. † Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center. Our thanks go to William Birdthistle, Erik Gerding, Mike Knoll, Reed Shuldiner, Lynn Stout, Andrew Tuch, Charles Whitehead, and Chuck Yablon, and to participants at faculty workshops at the Cardozo, Cornell, Georgetown, and University of Pennsylvania law schools, and at the University of Miami Business Law Review Symposium. 783 784 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 86:783 contracts” firm of economic and legal theory. In practice, however, formal designations of separateness do not always stand up under the strain of economic reality. When coupled with financial disaster, the use of an SPE alter ego can turn even a minor compliance problem into a scandal because of the mismatch between the traditional legal model of the firm and the SPE’s economic reality. The standard legal model looks to equity ownership to determine the boundaries of the firm: equity is inside the firm, while contract is outside. Regulatory regimes make inter-firm connections by tracking equity ownership. SPEs escape regulation by funneling inter-firm connections through contracts, rather than equity ownership. The integration of SPEs into regulatory systems requires a ground-up rethinking of traditional legal models of the firm. A theory is emerging, not from corporate law or financial economics, but from accounting principles. Accounting has responded to these scandals by abandoning the equity touchstone in favor of an analysis in which contractual allocations of risk, reward, and control operate as functional equivalents of equity ownership—an approach that redraws the boundaries of the firm. Unfortunately, corporate and securities law hold out no prospects for similar responsiveness. Accordingly, we await the next alter-ego-based innovation from Wall Street’s transaction engineers with an incomplete menu of defensive responses. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................. 785 II. MYTHIC ORIGINS: MICHAEL MILKEN AND JUNK BONDS ..... 794 A. JUNK BONDS AND S&LS ........................................................... 795 B. THE FIRST COLLATERALIZED BOND OBLIGATIONS .................. 798 1. Imperial Savings ................................................................. 801 2. First Executive .................................................................... 805 C. SUMMARY ................................................................................. 811 III. THE FULCRUM: BISTRO ................................................................ 812 A. MOTIVATIONS ........................................................................... 813 B. BISTRO BREAKTHROUGH .......................................................... 816 C. SUMMARY ................................................................................. 819 IV. THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD: ENRON’S SWAPS......................... 821 A. ASSET LIGHT FROM WALL STREET TO MAIN STREET .............. 821 B. A BISTRO OPENS IN HOUSTON .................................................. 825 1. Chewco and LJM ................................................................ 826 2013] TRANSACTIONAL GENEALOGY OF SCANDAL 785 2. Bistro Inferno ...................................................................... 828 C. IMPLICATIONS ........................................................................... 831 V. THE STILLBORN SCANDAL: THE SIVS ....................................... 832 A. STRUCTURED INVESTMENT VEHICLES ...................................... 836 B. THE SIV PANIC .......................................................................... 841 C. REVENGE OF THE SIV: THE NON-SCANDAL ............................. 843 D. ENRON REDUX? ........................................................................ 846 VI. THE RIGHTFUL HEIR: GOLDMAN SACHS’S SYNTHETIC CDOS .............................................................................................. 847 A. THE ABACUS 2007-AC1 TRANSACTION ................................. 849 1. The SPE .............................................................................. 850 2. The Credit-Linked Notes .................................................... 852 3. The Credit Default Swap and the Portfolio Selection Agent.................................................................................. 853 4. The Super Senior Swaps ..................................................... 854 B. THE HITCH ................................................................................. 855 C. THE RECKONING ....................................................................... 858 D. CONTRACT OR FIDUCIARY? ...................................................... 859 VII. CONCLUSION: THE NATURE OF THE FIRM AND REGULATION BY SCANDAL .................................................... 863 I. INTRODUCTION Three scandals fundamentally reshaped the structure of business regulation over the past thirty years. First came the 1988 securities fraud prosecution of Michael Milken and his firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert,1 which generated the junk bonds that financed the takeover wars of the 1980s.2 The prosecution marked the end of the takeover wars,3 but not before Milken’s junk bonds had poisoned the balance sheets of many savings and loans, leading to their failures.4 The takeover wars reshaped Delaware corporate law,5 while the savings and loan debacle resulted in 1. JAMES B. STEWART, DEN OF THIEVES 461, 478–510 (1992) (providing the details of the prosecutions of Drexel, Milken, and others). 2. See infra Part II.A. 3. ROBERT B. THOMPSON, MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS: LAW AND FINANCE 235 (2010) (detailing how the prosecution of Milken may have prevented the appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court of City Capital Assocs. Ltd. P’ship v. Interco Inc., 551 A.2d 787 (Del. Ch. 1988), in which the Delaware Chancery Court had ordered a poison pill withdrawn). 4. BENJAMIN J. STEIN, A LICENSE TO STEAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF MICHAEL MILKEN AND THE CONSPIRACY TO BILK THE NATION 1–2 (1992). 5. See Revlon, Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc., 506 A.2d 173, 182 (Del. 1986) (requiring directors to maximize short-term value once they have decided to dismantle a company); 786 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 86:783 major banking law reforms, culminating in the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 19896 and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991.7 The second scandal was Enron’s accounting and securities fraud in 2001, which quickly led to the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”).8 More recently, the securities fraud scandal surrounding Goldman Sachs (“Goldman”) and its ABACUS 2007-AC1 transaction provided needed momentum to the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.9 Each of these scandals