Oxford Business Law Blog

As discussed in an earlier post, private ordering theories assume that the threat of a bad reputation incentivizes merchants to act honestly. This sort of governance by reputation, however, requires...

Trade relationships have gained abundant political momentum and media coverage in the last decade. The enduring Brexit saga is a case in point. However, this blogpost intends to adopt a broader,...

Foreign anti-corruption laws present a puzzle: why would the government of one country care to prevent corruption in another? Such laws impede the business activities of the country enacting them in...

Private ordering theorists put a great deal of weight on reputation to enforce honest behavior among market participants. They assume that the fear of getting a bad reputation and consequently being...

Rarely out of the headline news, market manipulation has always been a permanent fixture of securities markets. Even the earliest experiences of a modern-style stock exchange in the 17th century...

The hugely successful Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment (the Cape Town Convention) and its current Protocols for aircraft equipment, railway rolling stock and space assets...

Regulation, however necessary, is a cost to industry. RegTech, which encompasses uses of technology to automate or improve compliance and supervision, has emerged as a potential catalyst in recent...

What good can a corporate insolvency regime do in the modern economy? The question bears asking because the environment in which distressed companies find themselves is so markedly different from the...

For founders of companies, appealing to funders can be everything – and that often means projecting a masculine image. In a recent article, we coined the term ‘venture bearding’ to describe this...

Our paper on startups shows that European company law is still anchored to last century ideas about growth and economic development. We hope that the Italian experience and our proposals can be of...

In recent years, managers, regulators, and politicians, have often complained about the alleged short-term pressure exercised by the stock market on listed companies. Loyalty shares are probably the...

Based on current projections, China will be one of the world’s largest exporters of capital in the near future, a first in modern history for a nondemocratic state. The ‘China, Law and Development’ (...

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 decade since the financial crisis has witnessed a proliferation of various ‘light touch’ financial restructuring techniques in the form of so-called pre-insolvency proceedings. These proceedings...

The potential of financial technology for innovation and growth is well-established by now. Yet startups often face many regulatory challenges in the early years, obstructing market access...

In a chapter of the book ‘The Law and Finance of Related Party Transactions’ (L Enriques and T Tröger eds, CUP 2019), I explain why some controlling shareholders in bad-law jurisdictions ‘generously...

In my new paper 'Revisiting Legal Capital', I argue for the UK to revisit the legal capital (maintenance of capital) doctrine. Leaving the EU could present an opportunity, but to reform legal capital...