Daily Archives: August 10, 2005

A special talent

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coin.jpgI have no idea where my nephew Richard comes up with such things, but the two minute video that he links to in this blog post is pretty darn clever.
By the way, Rich, I highly recommend that you do not attempt to perfect the skill evidenced in the video while juggling your distractions this fall at Northwestern University Law School. Not that it would interfere with your studies that much. Rather, too many professors would be pestering you to teach them how to do it! ;^)

The PGA at Baltusrol is this week

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Baltusrol.jpgThe PGA Golf Championship begins tomorrow at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J. Golf Digest has its usual excellent coverage here, including this nifty interactive map.
By the way, this interesting Golf Digest article on the 1965 PGA Tournament — which was won by the late Houstonian Dave Marr — includes a funny anecdote about Ben Hogan that Dave passed along to me years ago over lunch at Houston’s Lochinvar Golf Club. Dave loved telling this story and did so humorously, so my written rendition of it cannot do Dave’s oral version justice. But the story went something like this:

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The SOX drain

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SoxLogo2.jpgThe Sarbanes-Oxley legislation (pdf) is an example of government at its worst — a knee-jerk reaction that addressed a relatively small problem (i.e., crooked businesspeople) that had little to do with the circumstances (i.e., the bursting of a stock market bubble) that prompted legislators to think that they needed to do something in the first place. Inasmuch as the SOX legislation coincided with the beginning of this blog, the counterproductive nature of the legislation has been a regular subject here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
In this timely article, financial columnist Bruce Bartlett (his blog is here) notes that the SOX effect on the economy is only getting worse, and reviews the growing body of research on the negative economic impact of SOX:

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Disney Board wins the corporate case of the decade

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disney4.JPGThe Delaware Chancellory Court issued its ruling yesterday in favor of the Walt Disney Company Board of Directors in the corporate case of the decade — i.e., the civil lawsuit over The Walt Disney Co. board’s decision to pay Michael Ovitz a rather generous severance package for essentially doing nothing during his short stay at Disney (earlier posts on the case are here, here and here). You can download a copy of the 175 page decision here and, based on a preliminary review, it appears that Larry Ribstein nailed it with his earlier prediction, which also provides excellent background on the fact and legal issues involved in the case. H’mm, I wonder if Professor Ribstein got any odds on his bet on the outcome of the decision?
As noted in this earlier post, check in at the Conglomerate blog for a discussion of the Disney decision by an outstanding group of corporate law scholars. Should be highly entertaining.

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