Oxford Business Law Blog

The latest issue of the CONSOB report on corporate governance of Italian-listed companies focuses on non-financial reporting, in addition to the usual survey of the main characteristics of Italian...

Blockchain technology is the new word on the street. A blockchain is in essence an append-only decentralized database that is maintained by a consensus algorithm and stored on multiple nodes (...

In We Have a Consensus on Fraud on the Market – And It’s Wrong, James Spindler argues that the near universal disdain among legal scholars for securities fraud class actions (SFCAs) is based on two...

Reporters are in the habit of looking at emerging technologies in isolation when describing their benefits, and that’s certainly the case with biometrics, blockchains, smart contracts, artificial...

Cities throughout the world are becoming smarter thanks to AI, big data, the Internet of Things (‘IoT’), and, more recently, blockchain. Smart cities automate administrative decision-making with...

Proprietary, sophisticated computer algorithms are a hidden yet central element of how we work and play today. Businesses use algorithms internally to make decisions and improve their service...

Examiners in US Chapter 11 bankruptcy procedures are usually appointed to conduct investigations. Recent reform proposals, such as the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) Reform Proposal, have...

Tronc Chairman Michael Ferro became the latest corporate executive to resign amid accusations of unwanted sexual advances when he stepped down from the helm of the newspaper publishing chain in mid-...

Policy-makers show an increasing interest in ‘nudges’ – behaviorally informed interventions that steer people in certain directions but that maintain freedom of consumer choice. Despite general...

A ‘black box’ can be described as a system in which the observable elements entail inputs and outputs, but without any understanding of its internal workings. In other words, the black box is opaque...

FinTech is rapidly transforming the financial services sector. Based on a broad range of different new technologies and innovations, it increasingly attracts the interest of national, global and...

Central securities depositories (CSDs) are of systemic importance for financial markets. In Europe, for instance, the European Association of CSDs (ECSDA) documented that in 2017 the total value of...

Good governance is essential to the long-term sustainability of any company. EU banking and insurance prudential standards require regulated institutions to have a rigorous governance framework,...

‘Africa Rising’ has been accompanied by significant legal challenges for many African governments. These have included costly, protracted creditor litigation against sovereign debtor states, poorly...

How do creditor rights affect firms’ financial and investment decisions and what are the economic consequences of liquidation-oriented vs. continuation-friendly bankruptcy laws? The law and finance...

Like with any new and hyped topic, the current discussion on smart contracts is rather complex and confusing. I believe that asking What, Who and Why can help to structure the debate and shed some...

The increasing pace of innovation in technology used for financial and banking services (“FinTech”) both raises alarm bells and brings high expectations. On the one hand, traditional banking players...

Back in the 1960s, George Stigler called into question whether states should require firms to publicly report their financials. A recent Stigler Center working paper revisits this issue and measures...

This cross-country study argues that corporate social responsibility (CSR) has an internal as well as an external focus: although the internal aspect has been less carefully examined in the...

Innovation is perhaps the single most important driver of productivity and growth. However, firms do not innovate in isolation but rather within an ecosystem of their technological peers, as many...