Oxford Business Law Blog

It is often said that transactions made on the blockchain are immutable: once the transaction is done, it is done. And in principle they are indeed immutable. Aside from security breaches, changes to...

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...

On 11 September 2018, the European Court of Justice (‘ECJ’) heard arguments in Google, Inc. v CNIL, a case that concerns the territorial scope of European data protection law. Among the questions...

Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy (OUP 2018) by Jeremias Prassl is an engaging, illustrative, and thought-provoking book. The book argues that gig-economy...

A project of the British Academy - 'The Future of the Corporation’ reached a major milestone on November 1, 2018 with the public discussion of a framework and supporting papers. The project is led by...

It is now twenty years since the publication of La Porta et al’s “Law and Finance” paper in the Journal of Political Economy. Although the methodology used in early law and finance papers attracted...

“Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.” Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz A Prussian general and the author of On War may...

On 26 June 2018, the Insolvency Regulation (Recast) (hereafter, EIR 2015) celebrated its first anniversary. It covers (i) the international jurisdiction of a court in a member state to open...

The European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) featured a Focus Panel on ‘Common Ownership: Antitrust Meets Corporate Governance’ at their Annual Members’ Meeting in Berlin, in May 2018. The...

One of the most controversial topics in corporate law scholarship has been whether there is a ‘short-termism problem’ in equity capital markets, and if there is such a problem, how to remedy it. One...

2019 Global Corporate Governance Colloquium Center for Financial Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany 7 - 8 June 2019 Deadline for submissions: 14 September 2018 (at midnight CET) The...

On 1 July 2018, the Supreme People’s Court of China’s 'Regulations on Several Issues regarding the Establishment of International Commercial Courts' (the Regulations) came into effect. The...

The ostensive watchdogs of market disclosure have become poster boys for corporate chicanery, argues Karthik Ramanna of Oxford’s Blavatnik School. Auditors are in the business of trust. But in the...

On 1 July 2018 the FCA (the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK’s financial services regulator) introduced a new category of premium listing exclusively available to equity issuers that qualify as ‘...

The recent AT&T and Amex decisions showcase the pitfalls of considering antitrust cases solely on the basis of economic analysis and may have the effect of immunizing tech giants from serious...

In the last few years there had sprung up in New Zealand a series of first instance cases where judges had acceded to pleas by liquidators that the damages for which company directors could be found...

The ability to avoid fraudulent or preferential transfers is a fundamental part of U.S. bankruptcy law. However, when a transfer by a U.S. entity to a non-U.S. transferee takes place outside the U.S...

The recent UK Parliamentary cross-party enquiry into the collapse of Carillion plc, the British multinational facilities management and construction services company makes interesting reading. Its...

In Case C-284/16 Achmea (Achmea), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) seems to once and for all establish that the legal system of the European Union (EU law) precludes investor-state dispute...

In a previous post, we wrote that the UK Government announced a series of reforms to the UK Corporate Governance regime in August 2017. Some of these reforms are being addressed through the on-going...