Oxford Business Law Blog

What is the (opportunity) cost of private benefits of control? Using dollar cost of corporate giving to measure private benefit of control, we show in our study ‘Private Benefits and Corporate...

The revised EU Capital Requirements Directive and Regulation, commonly referred to as CRD 5 and CRR 2, refine and continue to implement Basel III framework in the EU. One of the key rules introduced...

It has now been twenty years since the European Court of Justice delivered its landmark Centros­ decision, followed by a string of cases similarly supportive of corporate mobility. In theory, these...

Gender Balancing Laws are popular means for regulators to increase the female representation on corporate boards. Norway was among the first countries to introduce a mandatory board gender quota back...

Adam Winkler’s We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights (WW Norton & Co 2018) is provocative and important, and it is filled with stories documenting the Supreme Court...

Do you remember the last time you ‘sold’ your personal data for some digital content or digital services? Google, Uber, Facebook, Netflix, Spotify—you name it. They all accept data as a ‘payment’...

Over-the-counter (‘OTC’) derivative transactions have been a feature of the financial markets for a number of decades, and the ISDA Master Agreement, which is used to govern OTC derivative...

Why don’t we see more regulatory arbitrage? What constrains it? Regulatory arbitrage refers to structuring activity to take advantage of gaps or differences in regulations or laws. Examples include...

The new Regulation on prudential requirements for MiFID investment firms (IFR) and the accompanying Directive (IFD) have now been passed by the European Parliament and, subject to adoption by the...

Once upon a time, in a far simpler world, corporations and their shareholders had a direct relationship with each other. Corporations could follow any change in shareholdings directly from the share...

In 2006, the world was shocked when thirteen-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide after being told, by a fake user on the social networking platform Myspace, that the world would be better off...

Delaware is home to more than half of all public corporations, and its market share among initial public offerings is even higher. Not surprisingly, therefore, an extensive body of literature is...

Debt restructuring is an issue that has come to prominence in the twenty years since Centros, in large part due to the difficulties faced by companies in the aftermath of the 2007-08 global financial...

Trust is an integral aspect of all human relationships. Trust facilitates social cooperation and coordination. Contractual relationships are no exception. Non-legal mechanisms such as reputation and...

In April 2018 the European Commission presented a proposed directive on cross-border mobility which includes a new legal process for cross-border conversion. The JURI committee of the European...

In mid 2017, having paid little attention to Artificial Intelligence (AI) beyond noticing that it had replaced “globalisation” as the focus of ambitious middle class conversation, my inbox started to...

2019 marks the ten-year anniversary for the Spector-decision, where the European Court of Justice determined that when an investor is in possession of inside information while trading, it can be...

Law firms don’t just go bankrupt – they collapse. Dewey & LeBoeuf; Bingham McCutchen; Heller Ehrman; Howrey; Thelen. All of these firms and many others have disappeared with extraordinary...

Shocks that hit part of the financial system, such as the subprime mortgage market in 2007, can propagate and amplify through the complex network of interconnections among financial and non-financial...

One of the issues which has bedevilled agreement at EU level on mechanisms which might allow a company to alter its applicable corporate law (without changing anything else) is the potential impact...

Since the US Supreme Court effectively closed the door to foreign, human rights related claims against businesses under the Alien Tort Statute, courts in the UK, Canada and beyond have seen an...