Oxford Business Law Blog

As part of efforts to mitigate the adverse economic effects of the pandemic since the outbreak of COVID-19, financial sector supervisory authorities have taken measures to restrict capital...

On March 24, 2021, the Competition Commission of India (‘CCI’) took suo moto cognizance and launched an investigation against WhatsApp and Facebook (‘Investigation Order’). This was a result of...

Climate change litigation in Europe has entered the realm of fundamental rights and constitutional law. The Supreme Court of the Netherlands (Hoge Raad der Nederlanden) has delivered an attention-...

Over the last 12 months, there have been important developments in Australia in relation to climate change risks. Australian regulators have set a clear expectation that entities and their officers...

Sustainability is currently one of the highest-ranking issues on the social and political agenda. As corporations have imposed important externalities on the environment, proposals to rein in their...

Recently, the Singapore Legal Opinion on Climate Change was launched; so was a White Paper that elaborates on the Opinion. I will first provide an overview of the Opinion and then I will discuss what...

Since its inception, the blockchain has been surrounded by an anti-legalistic whiff. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, hailed its ‘unstructured simplicity’. Even to this day,...

In June, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed that, in addition to its ongoing work developing climate risk disclosure standards, it was considering ‘requirements for investment...

Less than a decade ago, ExxonMobil was the most valuable company in the world. Yet in June 2021, Engine No. 1—a newly launched impact hedge fund holding only 0.02% of Exxon’s shares—made history by...

In the recent 5th OBLB Annual Conference on ‘Business Law and the Transition to a Net Zero Carbon Economy’, the panel for Day Three (Topic: Climate Change in the Boardroom) took up the director’s...

Following up on Brett McDonnell, Hari Osofsky, Jacqueline Peel and Anita Foerster’s thoughtful paper and recent OBLB contribution, this post highlights a number of issues it raises for corporate...

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...

On June 3, US President Joe Biden issued an unprecedented National Security Study Memorandum designating corruption as a core US national security interest. In that Memorandum, President Biden stated...

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...

On April 21st, the European Commission published yet another package of corporate sustainability regulation proposals. Possibly the most awaited element of this release concerns the review of the EU’...

When one thinks about financial systems, what comes to mind? Perhaps financial institutions like banks, central banks, insurance companies, asset managers, and hedge funds? Perhaps financial markets...

In any large enterprise—whether a major corporation or large government agency—indicia of corruption can be difficult to find. Unlike money laundering, which typically requires frequent infusions of...

Most public bids in the UK market are implemented by scheme of arrangement. When it becomes effective, a scheme of arrangement results in the transfer of all of the shares of the target to the bidder...

On 26 May 2021, the District Court of the Hague passed a judgment recognizing an obligation of Royal Dutch Shell to mitigate climate change. Shell was ordered to reduce all carbon dioxide (CO2)...