Oxford Business Law Blog

The famous quote from Machiavelli’s The Prince states that ‘in the actions of all men, and especially of princes [i.e., the regulators], one judges by the result’. In short, the end justifies the...

Data breaches are increasingly common in our world. While computers and the Internet have created new opportunities to collect, store, and transmit information, they have also created new...

Mandatory disclosure is a foundation of modern securities law, both in the United States and around the world. But is it really necessary? After all, corporate promoters wishing to sell securities...

Many modern problems—money laundering, investor fraud, cryptocurrency abuses—cannot be addressed effectively by solitary agencies. Instead, cross-border and borderless problems require a coordinated...

The CEO pay ratio disclosure rule in the United States (US), adopted as part of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, was the first of a kind. Applying to publicly-held companies, it requires disclosure of the...

Although various authorities in the US have repeatedly claimed that they do not wish to over-regulate cryptoassets or to stifle innovation in the space, overlapping regulations produced by a...

‘Equity crowdfunding’—small Internet-based public securities offerings exempt from the usual regulations for such transactions—is an exciting new source for entrepreneurial finance, and New Zealand...

Why are security interests and legal entities both widely used? The prevailing answer in legal scholarship is that both bodies of law exist to partition assets for the benefit of designated creditors...

The interaction of securities regulation and technology creates a vast array of complex issues, including whether certain things constitute securities at all. For example, the United States...

For about 50 years – at least since Texas Gulf Sulphur – the SEC has ordered defendants to disgorge their profits from transactions that violated the securities laws. Despite disgorgement’s long...

Governments worldwide are increasingly recognizing that assisting the development of start-ups and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) is critical to fostering job creation and economic growth. As...

In my most recent paper, ‘Bond workouts, distressed equity offerings and State interventionism - Analysis of the Consequences of the Inefficiency of French Law Concerning the Restructuring of Large...

More than 8,000 domestic equity securities were publicly traded in the U.S. OTC market in 2010. Yet, research studying this market is limited. Stocks in this market tend to be small. The OTC market...

As of July 7th, 2017, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have raised over USD 380 million this year in exchange for the issuance of cryptocurrency. In the last 12 months or so, this process has emerged as...

Last week a Utah federal judge ruled that a provision of Dodd-Frank[1] authorizes the US Securities and Exchange Commission (‘SEC’) to bring fraud claims concerning securities bought or sold entirely...

In early December, the European Parliament, the EU Council and the EU Commission reached agreement on revisions to the EU Prospectus Regulation. The EU Prospectus Regulation will replace the EU...

Recent legal reforms have authorized the “crowdfunding” of securities, which is where a company offers stock, bonds or other securities over the Internet, without having to comply with the usual (and...

The recent Kolassa ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) is of great significance. For the first time, the court has decided on the competent court in prospectus liability...

Crafting appropriate financial regulation is difficult. Policymakers worry that excessive regulation might inhibit capital formation and reduce economic growth. Even funding policymakers is hard; the...