Company Interlocks and Antitrust Issues
With the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times writing about the similar composition of the Board of Directors at Google and Apple, we remind you that Advisen.com features a Company Interlock display to show you where Directors and Officers at public and private companies are affiliated with other companies. If you are reviewing the possibility of antitrust issues or other risks related to management liabilities coverages, you'll appreciate this simple way to see other places where Directors and Officers serve.
Earlier this week, both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported that the US Federal Trade Commission is looking into the relationship between Google and Apple which compete directly in the cellphone market. Federal law prohibits a director being on the boards of two companies that are direct rivals. Investigations of this sort may trigger a notice of claim that could lead to substantial defense and investigation costs which could be covered by a D&O policy. As the Obama Administration has suggested that it will take a harder line on antitrust regulation, a quick review of the Board composition seems prudent. Advisen.com makes this easy.
COMPANY INTERLOCKS
To access the list of interlocked directors and officers of any public or private company, select the company on Advisen.com. Now go to Board & Management and choose Company Interlocks. Note that you also have complete biographies of all D&Os listed as well under Directors & Officers.
For example, if you review Google by entering the ticker GOOG, you can use Advisen's Company Interlocks to determine that Eric Schmidt and Arthur Levinson both serve on the boards of Google and Apple.
How does Advisen's Company Interlocks tool work? Our computers run through all of the Directors and Officers associated with 13 million companies in our database. Using a proprietary algorithm, we determine similar names, biographical backgrounds and demographics. Then we match these names back to the company and present the data to you under Company Interlocks.
ANTITRUST EVENTS & LOSSES
Advisen's Large Loss database called MSCAd for Master Significant Cases & Actions database contains 35,000 entries totaling $900 billion in potential loss and events. This MSCAd archive contains 160 Antitrust losses resulting in $21 billion of loss. When these 160 entries are sorted by industry, Tech/Software, Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals top the list.
To access this list, click on the Losses & Exposure dropdown menu and select MSCAd. Click on the Case tab, choose Management & Strategy cases and then indicate Antitrust. Now click the List tab to view the results.
COVERAGE COMPARISONS & ANTITRUST
If you are concerned about when or whether coverage may be triggered in your D&O policy by an Antitrust investigation, take a look at your policy's Notice of Claim provision. You can view the Notice of Claim provision as it appears on Advisen.com and you can see that same provision in over 550 D&O forms archived in Advisen's Policy Comparison. With over 2,750 forms stored in our policy comparison library, you have a wealth of insight into policy wording variations.
To access PolComp, click on the POLICY & LAW COMPARISON dropdown in the Advisen system. Select Directors and Officers as the Coverage type and click on your forms. Now select the Notice of Claim provision from the dropdown list of topics. It's that easy. And we don't get rid of forms or update them; we just keeping adding new versions to the mix. So, you can compare two iterations of the same form, too, and that's useful in this soft market.
Kudos to Advisen's Chad Roth who spotted this "real life" application of Advisen.com
Use this arsenal of data and analytics for your advantage. We are happy to walk you through this functionality anytime, too. Contact your Advisen Rep at [email protected].
