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  • Corporate Finance
  • Financial Regulation
20 Oct 2020
9 min to read

Big Fish in a Big Pond: Exploring Some Novel and Some Familiar Legal Issues Posed by DeFi and Sushiswap – Part A

Joon Kim

Decentralized finance (‘DeFi’) has become a major use case for blockchains over the past several months. Users have loaded billions of dollars onto DeFi platforms, causing the secondary market prices...

OBLB categories

  • Corporate Finance
  • Corporate Governance
  • Financial Regulation
19 Oct 2020
3 min to read

The Relevance of Public Law Uncertainty to Private Ordering on Stock Exchanges and Beyond

Jonathan Chan

Could public law uncertainty pose a problem for private ordering in the financial sector, not to mention other contexts? In a recent paper in the Journal of Corporate Law Studies, I examine the...
Featured

OBLB categories

  • Financial Regulation
19 Oct 2020
4 min to read

Developing Securities Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does it Matter?

Onoriode Reginald Aziza

In my recently published working paper titled ‘Developing Securities Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does it Matter?’, I revisit the debates on the utility of stock markets in sub-Saharan Africa. I...

OBLB categories

  • Corporate Governance
16 Oct 2020
3 min to read

Corporate Law and Corporate Psychopaths

Benedict Sheehy | Clive Boddy | Brendon Murphy

Corporate collapses not only make for dramatic headlines, but cost economies billions of dollars and millions of jobs in addition to destroying communities, people’s lives, and pensions. Beyond such...

OBLB categories

  • Financial Regulation
16 Oct 2020
12 min to read

Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act

Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.

Banks became major participants in US securities markets twice in the past century—during the 1920s and after the mid-1990s. Both times, banks with ‘universal banking’ powers originated risky loans...
Featured

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Corporate Governance
15 Oct 2020
5 min to read

EC Corporate Governance Initiative Series: ‘The EU Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative—room for improvement’

Alexander Bassen | Kerstin Lopatta | Wolf-Georg Ringe, Faculty of Law

The European Commission (DG Just) has invited feedback on its current Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative, which is based on the EY Study on directors’ duties and sustainable corporate...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Financial Regulation
15 Oct 2020
4 min to read

EU Bank Insolvency Law Harmonization—What Next?

Michael Schillig

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the (further) harmonization of insolvency laws pertaining to credit institutions was firmly in the crosshairs of EU regulators and policy makers. The principal arguments...
Featured

OBLB categories

  • Corporate Governance
14 Oct 2020
3 min to read

EC Corporate Governance Initiative Series: 'A Critique of the Study on Directors’ Duties and Sustainable Corporate Governance Prepared by Ernst & Young for the European Commission'

ECLE

In July 2020 the Directorate General for Justice and Consumers (‘DG’) published a report it had commissioned from the accounting firm, EY, on directors’ duties and sustainable corporate governance (...

OBLB categories

  • COVID-19
  • Commercial Law
  • Corporate Finance
  • M&A
14 Oct 2020
5 min to read

Material Adverse Change Uncertainty

Narine Lalafaryan

Covering unwelcome uncertainties of the future, yet inherently uncertain and ambiguous by themselves, material adverse change/effect (‘MAC’) clauses have evolved into important risk-allocation...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
14 Oct 2020
4 min to read

Small Business Bankruptcy Reform in the Arab World: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Jason Kilborn

A remarkable wave of bankruptcy reforms has washed over the MENA region, from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. News headlines have heralded these reforms as a great boon in particular to the thousands of...

OBLB categories

  • Corporate Finance
  • Corporate Governance
13 Oct 2020
5 min to read

EC Corporate Governance Initiative Series: ‘European Companies are Short-Term Oriented: The Unconvincing Analysis and Conclusions of the Ernst & Young Study’

Marcello Bianchi | Mateja Milič

The European Commission (hereinafter ‘EC’) is speeding up the sustainability reform process to improve the EU regulatory framework on company law and corporate governance. The considered policy...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Corporate Governance
13 Oct 2020
3 min to read

Whither Fiduciary Accountability

Robert Flannigan

The exposition of the law of fiduciary accountability has been negligently disintegrating for some time. I say negligently because the numerous departures from principle that presently agitate the...

OBLB categories

  • Corporate Governance
12 Oct 2020
4 min to read

Artificial Intelligence in the Boardroom: An Outright Exposure to Directorial Liability?

Samar Ashour

Recently, much interest has been expressed in the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) to the corporate boardroom including in the form of robo-director. The debate has taken a new intensity...
Featured

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
12 Oct 2020
4 min to read

Who Actually Owns the Crypto-assets Held at a Crypto-asset Intermediary?

Hin Liu | Henry Chong | Louise Gullifer QC (Hon)

Most crypto-assets are not held directly: they are either held using commercial software or, particularly in relation to high value holdings, they are held in some sort of custodial arrangement. In...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
09 Oct 2020
2 min to read

Another Look at Connected Party Pre-Packs

Tim Koch

Amidst the flurry of legislative activity presaging the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act, longstanding concerns over the perceived abuses associated with connected party pre-pack sales...

OBLB categories

  • Corporate Finance
  • Corporate Governance
09 Oct 2020
3 min to read

Tournament Culture and Corporate Misconduct: Evidence using Machine Learning

Jitendra Aswani | Franco Fiordelisi

For a long time, economists have been avoid discussing the term ‘culture’. The main reasons for this are that culture does not fit well with the rational agent theory of neoclassical economics, is...

OBLB categories

  • Financial Regulation
09 Oct 2020
6 min to read

The Wirecard Scandal: The High-speed Rise and Fall of a FinTech Company and Its Implications for Developed and Developing Economies

Stefan Zeranski | Ibrahim E. Sancak

Founded in Germany in 1999, Wirecard AG (‘AG’ is a public limited company formed in Germany) operated in the digital payment segment of the FinTech sector. The shares of Wirecard were listed in the...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Corporate Governance
08 Oct 2020
1 min to read

Announcing the New Series: ‘European Commission Initiative on Directors' Duties and Sustainable Corporate Governance’

OBLB Editors

The Oxford Business Law Blog is launching the ‘European Commission Initiative on Directors' Duties and Sustainable Corporate Governance Series’ or, for brevity, ‘the EC Corporate Governance...

OBLB categories

  • Commercial Law
  • Financial Regulation
08 Oct 2020
4 min to read

New Developments in Cryptoassets: Insights from Industry, Regulatory Concerns, and Responses

Apolline Blandin | Hatim Hussain

In the history of international monetary and payment systems, very few developments have witnessed the same breadth and intensity of change in a short period of time as cryptoassets. Over the past...

OBLB categories

  • COVID-19
  • Commercial Law
08 Oct 2020
5 min to read

Tracking Bankruptcy Filings in the COVID-19 Crisis

Jialan Wang | Jeyul Yang | Benjamin Iverson | Raymond P Kluender

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted normal life and triggered massive economic slowdowns. In the United States, consumer spending has dropped dramatically and unemployment temporarily hit the highest...

OBLB categories

  • Corporate Finance
07 Oct 2020
6 min to read

True Expectations, the Expected Mediocre Long-Term Returns of ESG Index Funds

Bernard S. Sharfman

Investing in Environmental, Social, and Governance (‘ESG’) index funds is currently in vogue, now totaling around $250 billion. Yet, the US Department of Labor (‘DOL’) has taken a very negative...

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