Description: Corporate law expert Renee Jones shows how a wave of serious startup scandals--including FTX, Theranos, WeWork, and Uber--was enabled by financial deregulation that allows startups to grow to enormous size without going public. The result: a slew of corporate behemoths shielded from traditional legal mechanisms for deterring corporate wrongdoing.
Brief description: Renée M. Jones is Professor of Law and Dr. Thomas F. Carney Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law School. A nationally recognized expert in corporate and securities law, Jones served as the Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Corporation Finance from 2021 to 2023.
Review Quotes: Untamed Unicorns offers a rigorous analysis of how the traditional boundary between public and private markets has eroded, allowing large companies to operate beyond the disclosure and governance frameworks of the federal securities laws. Drawing on legal history, doctrine, and a close study of recent market failures, Renée Jones reveals how incremental regulatory changes have weakened market discipline and accountability. Importantly, Jones also proposes a coherent roadmap for reform, aimed at restoring transparency, oversight, and meaningful controls on private-market exemptions. It is a significant contribution to ongoing debates over securities regulation, and I commend it to policymakers and market participants alike.--Allison Herren Lee, former SEC Commissioner