Oxford Business Law Blog

Over the past decade, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has come to the forefront of attention both in the corporate environment and in the academic literature. According to the Global...

A recent incident involving Japanese conglomerate Toshiba bears important lessons for corporate governance in Japan, in particular shareholder activism and the possibility to acquire shares in...

In my recent article published in the Journal of Corporate Law Studies—‘British Social Enterprise Law’—I take a fresh look at the UK’s community interest company (CIC). In so doing, I make several...

The amount of capital in sustainable investing funds has risen in recent years, as investors’ awareness towards Environmental Social and Corporate Governance (‘ESG’) heightened related issues. This...

In the early hours of the morning of 14th June 2017 a fire broke out in one of the fourth-floor flats at a recently renovated tower block at Grenfell Tower, London, a social housing complex of almost...

Corporate governance reforms in India have undergone a significant overhaul since the late 1990s. In 2000, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) introduced the first set of comprehensive...

In their recent post ‘Corporate Carbon Reduction Pledges: Beyond Greenwashing’, John Armour, Luca Enriques & Thom Wetzer (AEW) open up a number of important issues worthy of further consideration...

In the UK, the two directors’ duties most relevant to climate change arise under the Companies Act 2006. First, according to section 172 of the Act directors are under the fiduciary duty to promote...

The GameStop and meme-stock trading frenzy are evidence of a potential revolution in corporate governance and signal the rise of Generation Y (‘Millennials’) and Generation Z (‘GenZ’) as retail...

In 1976, economists Michael Jensen and William Meckling published what turned out to be the most cited academic business article of all time. Their paper, titled ‘Theory of the Firm: Managerial...

Bank resolution is a cornerstone of the regulatory architecture that emerged in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Its core aim is to orderly resolve distressed banks allocating losses to...

In recent weeks, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has devoted considerable attention to Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG, matters. It has requested public comment on climate...

The self-declared overall objective of the ‘Study on directors’ duties and sustainable corporate governance’ that Ernst and Young recently prepared for the European Commission DG Justice and...

In an article forthcoming in the European Journal of Law & Economics, I argue that, even if we accept the argument made by Manne, Epstein and others that firms wishing to allow their employees to...

By employing a comprehensive study of the legal practices of the venture capital industry, my recent article ‘The Political Economy of China’s Business Organisation Laws and its Implications for...

Recent developments have placed antitrust law on a collision course with corporate purpose. In a new paper, I reveal the unforeseen negative impacts of this conflict and provide a roadmap for...

The fundamental question in the law of business organizations—what is the purpose of the corporation? —contains a related question of constituencies and therefore priorities among them—whom does the...

Since 2010, the UK’s Stewardship Code has encouraged institutional investors to proactively engage with the boards of the companies in which they are invested (issuers) to pre-emptively identify and...