Oxford Business Law Blog

ETFs, broadly defined as exchange-traded portfolios of assets, have proven to be among the most successful financial innovations of recent history. Since the introduction of the first ETF in the...

The advent of social media has revolutionized the 21st century, making significant changes to internet communication. This post looks into the shortcomings of social media such as Facebook, Twitter,...

For quite some time, artificial intelligence (in the following: AI) has been at the centre of attention of IP and competition law scholars. Yet, the role unfair competition law (in the following: UCL...

A vast literature studies the role of institutions, such as regulation, for economic outcomes. An implicit assumption in many theoretical and empirical studies in the field is that the law is...

The escalating debate over corporate purpose is not confined to Western developed economies. Rapidly developing economies like India are similarly grappling with how to define and develop a legal...

With talk of driverless companies and bots substituting for human beings on company boards either in part or completely, the spectre of a future controlled by entities devoid of human beings is upon...

In recent years, corporate scholars and policymakers have devoted a great deal of attention to explore how large institutional investors, mainly mutual funds, lack capabilities and incentives to...

The topic of common ownership has received substantial attention from both academics and policymakers in recent years. Broadly defined, common ownership exists when investors hold partial and...

When institutional investors hire proxy advisors to prepare reports on matters up for vote at the public companies in which they invest, are they interested in acquiring a bottom-line recommendation...

We wish all our readers and authors a happy and peaceful Holiday Season! The blog will resume publications on 4 January 2021. The OBLB Editors

At the turn of the last century, a fantastic characterization of stock exchange efficiency looked to a powerful, supernatural force referred to simply as ‘the market’, which was an oracle of true...

Human rights are human rights. Granting them not only to human beings but also to corporations seems like a perversion—not only because corporations have neither body nor soul but also because...

For years, the extent of patent rights of a patentee after sale of a patented product has been the subject of much judicial debate. This is especially so as the resolution of this issue required the...

A contractual right can be treated as an asset and transferred to a non-party. But when are contractual rights transferable? The answer to this question is mainly provided by the law of assignment...

When a company becomes factually insolvent but it is not yet subject to a formal insolvency proceeding, the shareholders—or the directors acting on their behalf—may engage, even in good faith, in...

The growing thicket of regulatory rules in professional and private life is a well-known phenomenon in modern societies. Whereas specific rules and regulations may seem sensible, an excess of too...

On June 11, 2020, the Hertz Corporation attempted to become the first corporate debtor to finance a bankruptcy proceeding by issuing new shares of common stock to the public. Though many thought...

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, EU Member States granted vast amounts of state aid to financial institutions in order to preserve financial stability and avoid the...