Oxford Business Law Blog

Japan has reformed its corporate governance system in recent years, with a particular focus on the role of outside/independent directors. Roughly stated, an “outside director” under the Japanese...

Standard form contracts are known to be ‘sticky’: Although sophisticated commercial parties should be expected to update their contracts whenever doing so increases contract value, research has shown...

Several countries and regions around the world, including Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the European Union are amending their restructuring framework to implement a pre-insolvency mechanism that...

Since the 1990s, the Internet has become the communications channel by which an increasing number of commercial and financial transactions take place. But already in the 1990s, it was clear that the...

The UK’s reviews of the Big Four auditing firms have largely adopted an approach of more regulation and government oversight. This approach is not an unnatural response in the face of the evidence...

Global governance is in crisis. The conventional treaty-based system is struggling to cope with the multiple challenges faced by global society. This failure is evident in various areas, including...

Our forthcoming article focuses on the regulation of unfair trading practices (‘UTPs’) in the food supply chain. This topic has been on the EU’s policy agenda since 2009 when the European Commission...

Complex capital structures are prevalent in many recent high-profile Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases. One recent example is Toys ‘R’ Us, whose debt structure was, as characterized by Bloomberg...

In this post, we provide an overview of the main findings of the latest Report from the Italian financial regulator, CONSOB, on Italian households’ financial choices. The 2018 edition of CONSOB’s...

A basic distinction within the law of contractual remedies is between remedies aiming to compel promisors to perform the very thing they have undertaken to do—to deliver goods, to convey real...

Blockchain technologies promise to execute tasks that have traditionally been settled by legal institutions. Some providers of such technologies explicitly offer ‘to act as a digital jurisdiction’...

Surplus is a ubiquitous feature of economic activity. The ubiquity of surplus challenges us to find fair and efficient ways to share resources. This is the surplus problem. In my article, Law and...

Our paper brings together two areas seemingly far apart in finance ─ the world of sustainable and social finance and the largely unregulated markets in initial coin offerings (ICOs). The UK...

In our paper, we examine the impact of the enhanced executive remuneration disclosure rules introduced in the UK in 2013 on the voting behavior of shareholders. The new UK regime requires issuers to...

For many financial products, such as loans and insurance policies, companies distinguish between people based on their different risks and returns. However, the ability to distinguish between people...

In 2005, the perception that wealthy executives were being rewarded for failure led Congress to ban Chapter 11 debtors from paying ‘retention’ bonuses to senior managers. Prior to the reform,...

The Gibbs Rule is back in the global spotlight. This English common law rule dates back to a decision in Anthony Gibbs & Sons v La Societe Industrielle et Commerciale des Metaux issued in 1890...

Inspired by present technological advances we redefine a financial derivative contract which is able to be processed in a fully digital and algorithmic way. OTC Derivatives and their historic...

The Conference on European Restructuring and Insolvency Law (CERIL) published a report on ‘Cross-border Restructuring and Insolvency post-Brexit’ on 12 December 2018. The report highlights the...

The online digital economy has benefitted us with waves of innovation, transforming the way we search, shop, communicate and consume information. Be it on our computer, tablet or mobile device, the...

Are insolvent firms different from solvent firms with respect to insider trading law and policy? Formally, the law does not change. But economic realities and non-securities law duties do. As a...