Oxford Business Law Blog

The Business & Liability Research Network (BLRN)—a partnership between the Company Law department and the Business Studies department of the Leiden Law School—is launching its call for proposals...

A small number of large fund groups have become an increasingly influential force by controlling a significant share of publicly-traded companies, a phenomenon often termed ‘common ownership’. They...

What drives changes in corporate law? Certainly, corporate law tends to change toward increasing economic efficiency. In fact, corporate laws all over the world have converged in many important...

Is common ownership the Doomsday Machine for the operation of free markets, competition and capitalism as we know it? An observer of cutting-edge law and economics literature may indeed tend to...

The Spanish Ministry of Economy has recently released a new bill that, among other aspects, proposes an amendment of the Spanish Companies Act to allow listed companies to adopt loyalty shares. These...

Gender Balancing Laws are popular means for regulators to increase the female representation on corporate boards. Norway was among the first countries to introduce a mandatory board gender quota back...

Once upon a time, in a far simpler world, corporations and their shareholders had a direct relationship with each other. Corporations could follow any change in shareholdings directly from the share...

In mid 2017, having paid little attention to Artificial Intelligence (AI) beyond noticing that it had replaced “globalisation” as the focus of ambitious middle class conversation, my inbox started to...

It has been twenty years since the European Court of Justice issued its decision in Centros Ltd. v. Erhvervs - og Selskabsstyrelsen (Centros). Since that time, Centros has been widely understood as...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) often refers to ‘companies voluntarily going beyond what the law requires to achieve social and environmental objectives during the course of their daily...

The analysis of corporate governance has been a strikingly one-sided affair. The focus has been almost exclusively on ‘internal’ checks and balances, namely scrutiny of executives by the board of...

Due to the rapid growth of passive indexing, three large fund families – Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street – are now the de-facto arbiters of U.S. corporate law controversies. In 9 out of 10...

All blockchains have rules that govern their operations. As blockchains evolve they may need to change their rules. Blockchain governance refers to the system in place through which decisions...

Law and technology-related research has arrived in the world of corporate law, as academics begin to tackle topics like artificial intelligence (AI), increasing automation and robots, Big Data, and...

In this article, I document and explain the pervasive influence of nationalist impulses in shaping corporate law around the world and throughout History—a phenomenon which I term “the grip of...

Firms with strong corporate governance are often likened to democracies. Through their proposals and votes, shareholders can determine the broad direction of a company. However, shareholder...

A central issue in corporate governance literature is the extent to which ‘good’ governance practices are universal (one size mostly fits all) or instead depend on country and firm characteristics,...

A considerable proportion of publicly traded corporate bonds comprises bonds of privately held firms (ie, firms whose equity is non-listed and does not trade over the counter). In our paper 'Is it...

Global governance is in crisis. The conventional treaty-based system is struggling to cope with the multiple challenges faced by global society. This failure is evident in various areas, including...