Oxford Business Law Blog

Financial regulatory institutions are at the centre of intensive debates surrounding the regulatory tools to supervise financial firms and markets. There is also an important and growing body of...

The era of the US public corporation is in decline. Tectonic shifts in seemingly disparate regions of the corporate landscape are underway. Through the lens of a new theory of the firm, these...

A Call for Papers is inviting contributions to the Cambridge Handbook of Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability. Those tentatively selected to contribute will be invited to a...

Way before the 2008 financial crisis, high-profile cases against directors such as the Equitable Life Assurance Society v Bowley [2003] BCC 829, caused the realisation that directors are under...

The corporate governance spotlight, at least in some circles, has often been on directors and shareholders. Today, the classic problems of some holding ‘other people’s money’, or the ‘separation of...

At the end of 2015, data on control models and the ownership structure of Italian listed firms show persisting high ownership concentration and limited contestability of control. Moreover, the vast...

The 2008 financial crisis revived discussion and interest in the role that regulatory capture has played, both in the dynamics that led to the crisis and in the design of the bank bailouts. Questions...

On November 29, 2016, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published a Green Paper on Corporate Governance Reform, which sets out a series of options aimed at...

The German corporation (for the purposes of this post: “Aktiengesellschaft”) is known for its two-tier board system, employee codetermination on the level of the supervisory board, and minimum...

Can shareholders of a company override a management decision made by the board? In my paper I argue that the answer, at least since Automatic Self-Cleansing v Cuninghame [1906] 2 Ch 34 (CA), has been...

In a recent paper, I examine the largely emasculated role of corporate boards of directors in effectively discharging their fiduciary obligations of promoting and protecting the interests especially...

What is the role of the media and can it substitute for explicit legislation in some cases? In our paper, we present evidence that media pressure can propel corporate governance improvements...

Hedge funds have boosted shareholder activism worldwide. In the article “Exit, Voice and Loyalty from the Perspective of Hedge Funds Activism in Corporate Governance,” which was recently published in...

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...

The board of directors forms an integral part of a firm’s governance mechanisms. Yet, how boards perform their dual role of supervisor and advisor of corporate management is difficult to observe from...