Oxford Business Law Blog

In July 2020, the European Commission published the ‘Study on directors’ duties and sustainable corporate governance’ by EY (‘the Report’). The Report purports to find evidence of debilitating short-...

Institutional ownership has grown tremendously over the last decades, rising to more than 70% of US public firms. The composition of institutional ownership has also changed, with a remarkable growth...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...