Oxford Business Law Blog

By many accounts, we have entered an era of unprecedented contentiousness in debtor-creditor relations. For an example of the new status quo, consider the recent actions of PetSmart, a perfectly...

In the United States, investment advisers to mutual funds (mutual fund advisers), exchange traded funds, and separately managed accounts are typically delegated the authority to vote their clients’...

In the United States, a significant majority of business entities incorporate in Delaware. That state’s law, therefore, applies in a great deal of litigation attacking actions taken by corporate...

In the 1970s and 80s, as major financial institutions grew and diversified their operations, courts and scholars recognized that fiduciary law posed profound challenges for the organizational...

When are banks fiduciaries of their customers and clients? This question is of more than theoretical interest given the organizational structure of modern financial institutions and the broad-ranging...

In February 2016, the CEO of BlackRock Inc., Laurence Fink, issued his annual letter to the CEOs of S&P 500 corporations. In this letter, three specific requests were made. The first was that...

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...

China’s private equity industry is expanding at an unprecedented pace and has now become the world’s second largest and Asia’s largest private equity market in terms of fundraising amount. As of 2016...

The duty to act in good faith in the interests of the company (now the duty to promote the success of the company in s 172 Companies Act 2006 (UK)) is the central fiduciary duty of company directors...

American courts routinely pay homage to Benjamin Cardozo’s classic statement in Meinhard v. Salmon (1928) that fiduciaries owe their beneficiaries a ‘duty of the finest loyalty’ that is ‘stricter...

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...

My paper, written for a forthcoming book focused on research concerning mutual funds, examines the content, scope, and function of the fiduciary duties owed by investment managers, drawing in...

In the United States, investors often receive investment advice from two types of financial intermediaries: broker-dealers and investment advisers. Regulatory agencies and self-regulatory agencies...

Some English judges recently have asserted that employees are not status fiduciaries. Their view is that, while employees have a status duty of “fidelity,” they are accountable as fiduciaries only...

The focus of my book “Australia’s ‘Company Law Watchdog’ – ASIC and Corporate Regulation” (a book that is entirely dedicated to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, ASIC) is the...

The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal has recently issued a decision on directors’ fiduciary duties in Cheng Wai Tao v Poon Ka Man Jason [2016] HKCFA 23. The court found that reliance cannot be placed...

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...