Oxford Business Law Blog

The escalating debate over corporate purpose is not confined to Western developed economies. Rapidly developing economies like India are similarly grappling with how to define and develop a legal...

In several common law systems, creditors of corporate debtors enjoy legal protections beyond what their contracts with those companies afford them in the form of vicinity-of-insolvency fiduciary...

In 1958, Nobel Laureates Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller controversially claimed that, under certain assumptions, the value of a firm is independent of its capital structure. Their article was a...

The problems in global financial markets are often similar, even though the capital market structure across jurisdictions differs significantly. The beginning of the 21st century was marked by a...

The modern marketplace is saturated with ‘ratings’ and ‘reviews’ of a firm’s products, services, and financial performance on platforms such as Google, Yelp, Bloomberg, and Facebook. While we know a...

After each horrifying factory disaster, financial scandal and tax avoidance exposé, the question on everyone’s lips is: how do we make corporations act more responsibly? While there have been...

Following on from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy's response to its November 2016 Green Paper on corporate governance reform, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has...

According to the Companies Act 2006, the directors of a company (except a small company: s 414A (2) CA 2006) must prepare a strategic report for each financial year of the company (s 414A (1) CA 2006...

In response to the recent Green Paper and the UK Government Response, the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (‘ICSA-The Governance Institute’) and the Investment Association (‘IA...

In this chapter on boards for Elsevier’s Handbook of Corporate Governance, edited by Benjamin Hermalin and Michael Weisbach, I argue that boards of directors are intellectually interesting; the...

An attempt at courtship has ended up in court. Over the past months, US paints and coatings giant PPG Industries (‘PPG’) has tried to woe the management and shareholders of Dutch rival Akzo Nobel (‘...

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 Business Innovation and Skills Committee of Parliament has begun an inquiry into corporate governance. It has invited comments on directors duties, executive pay and composition of boards with a...

An existential (but problematic) question in company law relates to the very purpose for which companies are incorporated and managed. Are companies to be run solely for the purpose of maximizing the...

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published the new list of members of its Securities and Markets Stakeholder Group (SMSG) following its approval by ESMA’s Board of Supervisors...

Accountability operates expressly and implicitly in the field of corporate governance to the point where it is regarded as one of its most critical elements. The accountability of the board of...