Oxford Business Law Blog

Once nearly consigned to the junk heap of economic history, the state-owned enterprise (‘SOE’) has staged a remarkable comeback in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Much (though not all...

Dual class capital structures have spread exponentially in recent years across much of the corporate world, as has previously been reported on this blog. Dual class listed companies today account for...

The criticisms made of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are well known. SOEs are said to be generally inefficient as they rely on state patronage and do not compete fairly. Such inefficiency can also...

The United States pursues more successful corporate criminal enforcement actions against large multi-national firms than any other country, collecting enormous penalties and occupying center stage in...

We are currently experiencing a technology-driven transformation in how companies organize themselves. The proliferation of networked digital technologies is forcing companies to reconsider every...

Auditors play a major role in corporate governance and capital markets. Ex ante, auditors facilitate firms’ access to finance by creating trust from public investors. Ex post, auditors can prevent...

Compliance law and practice have taken a priority among business people and academics who study corporations. Companies face heightened regulation and scrutiny from a host of federal and state...

With the adoption this week of The UK Stewardship Code 2020, to accompany The UK Corporate Governance Code 2018, the UK Financial Reporting Council has promulgated corporate governance, stewardship...

The rise and fall of The We Company IPO bubble is one of those events that, like the subprime mortgage bubble that preceded the financial crisis, calls for an examination of market structures that...

Technology will soon force broad changes in how we conceive of corporate liability. The law’s doctrines for evaluating corporate misconduct date from a time when human beings ran corporations. Today...

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...