Oxford Business Law Blog

A stewardship code is a set of principles on how institutional investors should act as shareholders of companies in which they invest. Since the first such code was adopted by the Financial Reporting...

In many markets, large institutional investors like BlackRock and Vanguard own significant stakes in most, if not all, horizontal competitors. Legal scholars have suggested that this pattern of...

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...

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 purpose of our paper ‘Shareholders’ Rights in Agency Conflicts: Selected Issues in the Transatlantic Debate’ (2018) 42 Delaware Journal of Corporate Law 569 is to provide the reader with a...

The popularity of index funds, which automatically track an index of stocks, is continuing to grow in the U.S, and, albeit less intensely, in the EU. Due to the high concentration of the index funds...

Compared to institutional investors, retail investors seem to be bound to remain minor actors on the corporate governance scene, even if Shareholders Rights Directive (SRD I) put forward shareholder...

Introduction Institutional investors (and among these, investment funds) play a key role in financial markets' development. They represent the world's largest source of equity capital, contribute to...

In our paper, 'Common Ownership and Voluntary Disclosure', which was recently made available on SSRN, we predict and find that common ownership is associated with increases in firms' voluntary public...

Activist hedge funds increasingly seek and secure board representation in public companies. Representation on target boards may signal a longer-term commitment to target companies that can mitigate...

What’s not to like about a broad set of principles that guide investor stewards in their responsibilities to their pension fund beneficiaries or investors? For example, the Investor Stewardship Group...

In a corporate governance landscape characterized by the growing importance of institutional shareholder engagement, board-shareholder dialogue is becoming an increasingly common practice both in the...

In a recent paper that we have published in the Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, we investigate the role of foreign shareholders in improving the quality of accounting information provided...

Drawing on the disconnect that currently exists between the social expectations associated with the corporate governance role of institutions and the institutions’ private interests, our article...

Fiduciary duties are foundational for institutional investors. The interpretation of these duties frames investment time-horizons, strategies and objectives, and defines those features of the...

For the greater part of the twentieth century the role of shareholders within the public corporation has been conceptualized within the contractarian framework influenced by the neo-liberal emphasis...

Concerns about the governance of public corporations have taken center stage in recent years. Part of the debate on improving governance has focused on policies that will give large shareholders...

At the recent Conference of the Parties “COP21” in Paris, 195 countries adopted the first-ever “universal, legally binding global climate deal”, committing to limit global warming to below 2°C above...