Centennial Speaker Series: James Park on The Valuation Treadmill: How Securities Fraud Threatens the Integrity of Public Companies

Join us for a lunchtime talk with UCLA Law professor James Park, author of the forthcoming book The Valuation Treadmill: How Securities Fraud Threatens the Integrity of Public Companies, who will discuss the history of securities fraud regulation from the 1960s until the present.

Public companies now face constant pressure to meet investor expectations. The typical public company must continually deliver strong short-term performance every quarter to maintain its stock price. This valuation treadmill creates incentives for corporations to deceive investors. Published 20 years after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires all public companies to invest in measures to ensure the accuracy of their disclosures, The Valuation Treadmill shows how securities fraud became a major regulatory concern. Drawing on case studies of paradigmatic securities enforcement actions involving Xerox, Penn Central, Apple, Enron, Citigroup, and General Electric, the book argues that corporate securities fraud emerged as investors increasingly valued companies based on their future performance. Corporations now have an incentive to issue unrealistically optimistic disclosure to convince markets that their success will continue. Securities regulation must do more to protect the integrity of public companies from the pressure of the valuation treadmill.

Agenda
12 p.m.: Welcome Remarks: Sris Chatterjee, chair, Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis

12:03 p.m.: Speaker Introduction: David Cowen, president and CEO, Museum of American Finance

12:08: p.m.: Presentation: James Park

12:45 p.m.: Audience Q&A

1 p.m.: Closing Remarks: David Cowen

About the Speaker
James Park is a professor of law at UCLA School of Law, where he teaches securities regulation. Before becoming a law professor, he worked as an assistant attorney general in the Investor Protection Bureau of the New York Attorney General’s Office. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and Miami University (Ohio).

Copies of The Valuation Treadmill will be raffled off to attendees.

This event is co-sponsored with the CFA Society New York, the Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis, and the Museum of American Finance.