SSRN

Buying from the Family: Private Equity-Owned Insurers and Their Affiliated Investments by Amy Huber, Stefan Huber, Bella Shan, and Christina Zhu.

As private equity firms expand their presence in insurance, this study examines how PE-owned insurers invest within affiliated credit networks. The authors find that PE-owned insurers channel substantial funding to affiliated issuers, often purchasing the same securities at higher prices than other insurers and effectively providing favorable financing terms.

While these investments offer higher promised yields, they also carry significantly greater downside risk under stress scenarios, raising important questions about policyholder protection, governance, and financial stability.

Read: http://spkl.io/61897HE4f

The End of the Beginning in Corporate Law by Roy Shapira. Delaware’s 2025 corporate law overhaul (SB 21) has largely been debated through the lens of controlling shareholders and conflicted transactions. This paper highlights a less-discussed but potentially far-reaching change: the elimination of the ab initio timing requirement, which previously required procedural safeguards to be adopted at the outset of negotiations.

Drawing on corporate law and negotiation research, the paper argues that timing is not merely procedural it plays a critical role in ensuring meaningful oversight and preventing cosmetic compliance. The analysis offers important insights into investor protection, corporate governance, and the future of litigation and judicial review in a post-SB 21 environment.

Read: http://spkl.io/61817GAml

The Impact of In-person Communication on Resolving Tax Uncertainty with the IRS by Matthew Cobabe, Jingjing Huang, Petro Lisowsky, and Kaishu Wu.

How much does face-to-face interaction matter when firms work through tax uncertainty with the IRS?

Using COVID-19 stay-at-home orders as a natural experiment, the authors find that firms that relied more heavily on in-person communication with the IRS before the pandemic were less successful at resolving tax uncertainty when those interactions became restricted. These firms saw less resolution of prior tax issues, more unfavorable settlements, and longer audit durations.

The effects are particularly pronounced among firms with historically high levels of IRS engagement, highlighting the important role that personal interaction can play in complex regulatory and tax matters.

Read: http://spkl.io/61877GAPd

The Price of Exclusion: Regional Institutions and Sovereign Risk in a Currency Union by Mahamadi Ouoba.

The study provides compelling evidence that markets value access to financial institutions and market infrastructure as much as, if not more than, political stability itself. Using recent WAEMU coup episodes, it shows that sovereigns excluded from the regional financial architecture face a significant and persistent financing premium, with impacts extending to bank equities.

Read: http://spkl.io/61867Gfks