Oxford Business Law Blog

Since late 2019 the UK Government has been discussing the possibility of allowing dual class capital structures in the premium listing regime of the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The revival of IPOs...

The famous quote from Machiavelli’s The Prince states that ‘in the actions of all men, and especially of princes [i.e., the regulators], one judges by the result’. In short, the end justifies 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...

The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted a wide range of responses from governments, central banks and regulatory agencies around the world as well as driving adaptations to corporate governance practices...

We have recently been commissioned by Edward Elgar to curate a Research Handbook on Global Capital Markets. It is timely for a Research Handbook to take stock of the key developments in global...

On Friday 12 June, the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow (the Corporate and Financial Law Research group) jointly hosted a full-day webinar entitled ‘Does the global pandemic signal a paradigm...

In October 2019, the European Union approved the Directive 2019/1937 on the protection of whistle-blowers (the Directive). As analysed in my previous blogpost and, in more detail, in my article ‘A...

As shown by the law and finance literature, most Latin American companies have concentrated ownership structures with controlling shareholders (La Porta et al, 1998, 1999). As a result, the primary...

The stock markets of Hong Kong and Singapore are characterised by companies with concentrated shareholdings. In addition, they routinely attract issuers whose assets and businesses are located...

It has become fashionable to extoll the benefits of an incumbent controlling shareholder in companies. Indeed, many of the failures of the stewardship movement, that encourages shareholders in UK...

From January 2018, a new version of the premium listing eligibility requirements will come into force. Notably, a new concessionary route for property companies will be introduced. Chapter 6 has been...

In two of the most prominent regional groupings in the world today, the age of heavy dependency on bank financing is now on the decline. Prompted by two different financial crises, namely the 1997...

In the wake of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (‘ASEAN’) worked towards setting up the ASEAN Economic Community (‘AEC’) to establish ASEAN as a single...

The financial crisis in Greece has vastly affected the Greek banking system, and hence, the financing opportunities of domestic entrepreneurs and companies. Against this background, on 1 September...

The FCA has published various proposals to reshape and enhance the UK's primary markets. The publications form a key part of the FCA's wider work on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the...

One of the key actions of the Capital Markets Union (hereinafter ‘CMU’) was the revision of the Prospectus Directive. On 7 December 2016, the European Parliament, the Council and the European...

When European banks were hit by financial calamity, a lack of alternative funding arrangements deepened the crisis. Stronger European capital markets would have changed that picture, because savers...

For over eighty years, US security laws have focused on mandating disclosures to protect investors. The efficacy of this strategy has been hotly debated for decades. Equity crowdfunding as it was...