Oxford Business Law Blog

The UK’s reviews of the Big Four auditing firms have largely adopted an approach of more regulation and government oversight. This approach is not an unnatural response in the face of the evidence...

The online digital economy has benefitted us with waves of innovation, transforming the way we search, shop, communicate and consume information. Be it on our computer, tablet or mobile device, the...

Collective redress on behalf of consumers has been debated for long in Europe and Germany. The ‘Dieselgate’ scandal has brought another occasion to advance the discussion. Both Germany and Europe are...

Introduction and Background The English Court of Appeal has recently decided a case about sovereign debt. Russia holds the debt - bonds with a face value of US$ 3bn, issued in December 2013. In 2014...

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...

The recent Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (“CFA”) decision in Moody’s Investors Service Hong Kong Limited v Securities and Futures Commission [2018] HKCFA 42 raises very important issues regarding...

Code and law have been entangled in a silent tension ever since the advent of cyberspace. The centralised architecture of cyberspace paved the way for law to prevail. The latest manifestation of this...

Conventional wisdom suggests that the U.S. is the ‘litigation nation’. However, when it comes to disputes concerning euro area integration, Germans also seem to be very gung ho to slug it out in the...

A bill (SB-826, the ‘Bill’) that would impose a quota for women on boards of public companies was recently approved by California’s State Senate and Assembly. Once signed by the governor, the law...

In July 2018, the European Parliament passed a resolution recommending to the Commission the creation of an optional EU-wide legal status for social enterprises. The Commission now has one year to...

On 25 April the Commission published its proposal for a directive amending Directive 2017/1132 as regards cross-border conversions, mergers and divisions (Proposal). One of the aspects of the...

There has been an explosion of articles in the popular press about the dangers of artificial intelligence (‘AI’). Some fear that machines with human-like intelligence could someday develop goals at...

The leniency regime under Indian Competition law comprises section 46 of the Competition Act 2002 (‘Act’), and the Competition Commission of India (Lesser Penalty) Regulations 2009 (‘Regulations’) as...

The arrival of robots, autonomous software agents and so-called 'Internet of Things'-devices challenges existing liability systems. While the operation of legacy products was mostly in the hands of...

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...

From time to time I am asked to explain how I can support the disproportionate voting found in dual class shares while at the same time strongly criticizing the 'empty voting' of mutual fund advisors...

The term ‘smart contract’ refers to computer code that is designed automatically to execute contractual duties upon the occurrence of a trigger event. Referring to a 1997 paper by Szabo, the simple...

Benjamin Franklin famously said, ‘in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes’. However, when it comes to our digital deaths the old adage is far from true. On 18 June...