Oxford Business Law Blog

Will crowdfunding ‘democratize’ investing and make startup capital available to a wider range of founders? Our preliminary study suggests that equity crowdfunding is not providing its expected...

The obligation on issuers to disclose inside information 'as soon as possible' is one of the cornerstones of EU securities market regulation. In my paper I explore the EU’s approach to regulating...

The most important function of judges is to decide cases brought to them by litigants. By contrast, they are not commonly seen as participants in a market for litigation, competing to ‘sell’ their...

In the decade after the global financial crisis 2007–09, financial regulation reforms have been extensive, led at the international level by the Basel Committee of the Bank for International...

While directors’ independence has become a common feature of governance all around the world, the definition of “independence” and the role of independent directors are not universally defined: they...

Introduction and Background The English Court of Appeal has recently decided a case about sovereign debt. Russia holds the debt - bonds with a face value of US$ 3bn, issued in December 2013. In 2014...

A recent criminal cartel case where sellers of posters used an algorithm to coordinate their prices on the Amazon platform created buzz in the competition community. While interesting with regard to...

Behavioral ethics has evidenced that through a combination of deliberate and non-deliberate processes, people may end up behaving unethically with limited awareness of the true ethicality of their...

The prospect of Brexit has led a number of countries on the European continent to take measures designed to make their civil justice systems more attractive for international litigants. In Germany,...

My recent book Ombudsmen and ADR: a comparative study of informal justice in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan 2018) is about how ordinary people experience part of the informal justice system. My focus is...

In a forthcoming paper in the European Review of Private Law, I discuss the European Commission's proposal for a directive regarding the modernization and better enforcement of European consumer...

Investor protection has been an ideal in corporate and securities law ever since the early 20th century, when Berle and Means famously highlighted shareholder vulnerability in modern public...

On 11 September 2018, the European Court of Justice (‘ECJ’) heard arguments in Google, Inc. v CNIL, a case that concerns the territorial scope of European data protection law. Among the questions...

In our paper, ‘Creditor Governance’, we investigate the degree to which large creditors exert influence over borrower investment decisions, and whether creditor-influenced changes in firm policies...

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, now ten years ago, was neither the start nor the peak of the financial crisis. Yet, the demise of the iconic investment bank, the fourth-largest in the United...

Transaction avoidance rules are widely thought to be an important tool in the regulation of related party transactions entered into by an insolvent or near insolvent firm. Such rules offer direct...

Takeover regimes in Europe have been under persistent scrutiny by the public, politicians, and market participants. Sometimes, that is just the nature of the game: Takeovers create winners and losers...

Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy (OUP 2018) by Jeremias Prassl is an engaging, illustrative, and thought-provoking book. The book argues that gig-economy...

Following the great financial crisis in 2008, preventing future bail-outs for large, systemically important banks while minimizing the repercussions of bank insolvencies on the stability of the...

Speakers associated with the Oxford MSc in Law and Finance recently met for a panel discussion on Technology and Finance. TJ Saw, Deployment Strategist at Palantir Technologies, who was involved in...

How does the common law of contracts evolve in the electronic marketplace? There are two striking features about the ways in which contracts in this area are adjudicated today. The first is the...