Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Boston
STATE: MA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2017139380
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2017139380
HEADING: Webber, David (David H.)
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100 1_ |a Webber, David |q (David H.)
377 __ |a eng
400 1_ |a Webber, David H.
670 __ |a Webber, David H. The rise of the working-class shareholder, 2018: |b ECIP title page (David H. Webber) revised ECIP title page, November 14, 2017 (David Webber; author prefers not to use his middle initial)
670 __ |a Email from publisher, November 30, 2017 |b (confirmed preferred name as Webber, David (David H.))
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Columbia University, B.A. (magna cum laude); New York University School of Law, J.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. Luntz Research and Strategic Services, Washington, DC, project director, 1997-1999; Hon. Harold A. Ackerman, United States District Judge, Newark, NJ, law clerk, 2002-2004; Patterson Belknap Webb and Tyler LLP, New York, NY, associate, 2004-2007; Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP, New York, associate, 2007-2008; Boston University School of Law, associate professor of law, 2010-2016, professor of law, 2016–. Boston College Law School, visiting professor of law, 2015-16; Tel Aviv University Law School, visiting professor of law, 2016; Delaware Corporate and Business Law Visiting Scholar in Residence, 2016. Appeared on NPR and Nightly Business Report.
MEMBER:Society for Empirical Legal Studies, American Law and Economics Association, Steering Committee Member, Boston University Center for Finance, Law & Policy (2010–), J.D. Career Planning, Placement, and Clerkships Committee (2010-2011), Executive LL.M. Committee (2012-2013), Transactional Law Committee (2011-2013), Academic Standards Committee (2011-2013), Student Life/Teaching Committee (2013-2014), Experiential Learning Committee (2013-2014), Graduate Banking Committee (2014–), Career Planning and Clerkships Committee (2014–), Faculty Workshops Committee (2015–), Phi Beta Kappa.
AWARDS:Lederman/Milbank fellow; Leonard Wagner fellow, 2008-2010.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Boston University Law Review, Journal of Corporation Law, Northwestern University Law Review, Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, and Arizona Law Review. Also contributor to Research Handbook on Mergers & Acquisitions.
SIDELIGHTS
David Webber works primarily within academia. He is aligned with Boston University, where he serves as professor under their Law department. Prior to starting his career, Webber attended New York University and Columbia University. Since launching his academic career, Webber has made appearances on numerous media outlets, including The David Pakman Show, Bloomberg Radio, and Nightly Business Report, among several others. He has also written numerous pieces related to his field of expertise, which have appeared in the likes of Reuters, New York University Law Review, Chicago Tribune, and Northwestern University Law Review. In 2017, Webber was bestowed with the Michael Melton Award.
The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon is Webber’s first full-fledged book, and serves as an examination of the prospects of today’s working class citizens. Through The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder, Webber makes the assertion that modern workers are in a better economic position than what is typically assumed. More specifically, through the accumulation of pensions, workers may possess the most financial potential of any other socioeconomic group. According to Webber’s findings, the amount of pension this group holds measures within the trillions. Workers can use this amount of money to improve their circumstances as, as Webber asserts, the amount of money combined from all of these pensions equals a considerable amount in terms of shares; the amount sits at a minimum of one third, and a maximum of half. Workers would be able to put this much money toward lobbying efforts, particularly when it comes to work reform. Webber remarks that having so much funding would give working citizens the power to enter corporate meetings and debate for increased rights, better working conditions, and so much more. To supplement his assertion, Webber provides anecdotes regarding previous movements designed to improve working conditions across the country. He also illustrates how money has come into play in terms of building these movements and making the types of progress that workers needed and deserved. However, workers can use their funds for more than just socio economic reform; they can also push for the creation of more jobs, thus generating further benefits for workers as a whole. Each of Webber’s assertions come illustrated with real-life examples of similar movements, as well as explanations on how to make certain, specific goals happen. In Publishers Weekly Online, a reviewer stated: “Webber marshals a lot of information into a common sense argument that will appeal to anyone with an interest in the current labor movement.”
BIOCRIT
ONLINE
Boston University website, https://www.bu.edu/ (June 12, 2018), author profile.
Publishers Weekly Online, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (April 1, 2018), review of The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon.
David Webber
Professor of Law
AREAS OF INTEREST
Civil Procedure, Corporate, Business & Transactional Law, Mergers & Acquisitions, Securities, Shareholder Activism & Litigation
CONTACT
OFFICE
Room 1402K
EMAIL
dhwebber@bu.edu
PHONE
617-358-6194
Full CV
Google Scholar Page
BIOGRAPHY
David Webber is the author of The Rise of the Working Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon, published by Harvard University Press in April 2018. He has also published scholarly articles including “The Use and Abuse of Labor’s Capital” in the New York University Law Review and “The Plight of the Individual Investor in Securities Class Actions” in the Northwestern University Law Review. Webber has presented his research at the Harvard Stanford Yale Junior Faculty Forum, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and the American Law and Economics Association conference, among others. He has published op-eds in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and Reuters. He has been interviewed by television, radio, and print media, including Nightly Business Report, NPR’s Marketplace, Bloomberg Radio, The Majority Report with Sam Seder, The David Pakman Show, Knowledge@Wharton Business Radio, CSPAN’s BookTV, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and others.
Webber is the winner of Boston University School of Law’s 2017 Michael Melton Award for Teaching Excellence. He is a graduate of Columbia and NYU Law School, where he was an editor for the law review.
Webber, a Boston University School of Law professor, argues that though the working class is widely perceived to be suffering, its members in fact have tremendous potential economic power in the form of the trillions of dollars held in their pension funds. These funds, which estimates put at somewhere between one-third and one-half of all private equity, can, and should, Webber argues, be used to shape the economy in the interests of workers. By exercising their rights as shareholders in major companies, the working class and their allies have found a backdoor to boardrooms, demanding reform on matters such as CEO pay. Webber weaves narratives of activist campaigns (pension fund administrators, union staffers, and government comptrollers are the book’s unlikely heroes) with fine-grained analysis of the relevant legal and financial concepts in accessible prose. He shows how working-class shareholder activists have taken the lead in divesting entirely from under-performing hedge funds or negotiating better arrangements with private equity funds. Webber suggests that they could also use their power to benefit labor, noting, for example, that the retirement funds of public employees are often managed by private equity firms that invest in companies that take jobs away from the public sector. (In one of the cases cited, a Massachusetts-wide trust invested public employee retirement funds in Aramark, a facility-management and food-service provider that competes with public employee unions to service prisons and public schools.) Webber marshals a lot of information into a common sense argument that will appeal to anyone with an interest in the current labor movement.