Oxford Business Law Blog

Artificial intelligence has had a profound impact on finance. In the span of a few decades, it has made finance faster, more accessible, more profitable, and more efficient in many ways. Despite all...

The ‘traditional’ IPO model has received a lot of criticism recently in the media and from venture capital investors for perceived ‘mispricings’ that result in a pop in the opening trade. Recently,...

We are currently experiencing a technology-driven transformation in how companies organize themselves. The proliferation of networked digital technologies is forcing companies to reconsider every...

The typical structure of corporations with multiple classes of stock consists of multiple classes of preferred stock and one or more types of common stock. These structures are most commonly used in...

Auditors play a major role in corporate governance and capital markets. Ex ante, auditors facilitate firms’ access to finance by creating trust from public investors. Ex post, auditors can prevent...

The UK’s adoption of a stewardship code sparked a global shareholder stewardship movement. Singapore, as a corporate governance leader in Asia, naturally followed suit by introducing its stewardship...

In response to the sharp increase in campaigns by activist hedge funds in France and Europe generally, a French commission has conducted an extensive investigation and issued a carefully researched,...

Back in August, the Business Roundtable, which comprises the chief executive officers of America’s largest companies—with combined annual revenues of $7 trillion—updated its long-standing statement...

In my paper ‘The Road Towards Good Bankruptcy Governance: A Comparative Law and Economics Perspective’ (published in the conference proceedings booklet ‘Party-Autonomy and Third Party Protection in...

If you ask a hundred lawyers whether a software system or a robot can buy a house or file a lawsuit, all of them would be likely to answer ‘no.’ But because of the extreme flexibility of limited...

Perhaps the most attractive aspect of the UK system is the ability of the Panel on Takeovers and Mergers (the Panel) to regulate the takeover landscape without interference from other public bodies...

Venture capital funds are widely recognised as performing a crucial intermediation role in the start-up sector, as they are capable of pooling capital from various investors, both individual and...

With the adoption this week of The UK Stewardship Code 2020, to accompany The UK Corporate Governance Code 2018, the UK Financial Reporting Council has promulgated corporate governance, stewardship...

Our forthcoming Article in the Harvard International Law Journal (Spring/Summer 2020) addresses an important but understudied topic of relevance to academics from a wide range of disciplines who...

The rise and fall of The We Company IPO bubble is one of those events that, like the subprime mortgage bubble that preceded the financial crisis, calls for an examination of market structures that...

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...