Oxford Business Law Blog

New technologies such as the blockchain and artificial intelligence could have profound effects on corporations. Research shows, for instance, that blockchains could be employed to clear and register...

The treatment of defaulting loans has become a major concern for supervisory authorities and bank regulators. During the global financial crisis (GFC), the growth of nonperforming loans (NPLs) was a...

In our recent research paper, we argue that venture capital-friendly corporate law should feature flexible fair value protections. Venture capital is critical to innovation and, thus, economic growth...

Part A of this post offered a high-level overview of DeFi by focusing on one particular DeFi project, Sushiswap. In this Part B, the post will explore legal and compliance considerations that are...

Could public law uncertainty pose a problem for private ordering in the financial sector, not to mention other contexts? In a recent paper in the Journal of Corporate Law Studies, I examine the...

Covering unwelcome uncertainties of the future, yet inherently uncertain and ambiguous by themselves, material adverse change/effect (‘MAC’) clauses have evolved into important risk-allocation...

The European Commission (hereinafter ‘EC’) is speeding up the sustainability reform process to improve the EU regulatory framework on company law and corporate governance. The considered policy...

For a long time, economists have been avoid discussing the term ‘culture’. The main reasons for this are that culture does not fit well with the rational agent theory of neoclassical economics, is...

Investing in Environmental, Social, and Governance (‘ESG’) index funds is currently in vogue, now totaling around $250 billion. Yet, the US Department of Labor (‘DOL’) has taken a very negative...

Payment media, from gold coins to stablecoins, exist to be used, and in practice their use requires payment systems. In our paper ‘Central Bank Digital Currencies And Stablecoins – How Might They...

In an earnings conference call with investors in 2008, Edward J Shoen, chief executive officer and chairman of U-Haul International, Inc., lamented that the Avis Budget Group, Inc., its main...

The ECGI - SSE Riga Conference on ‘SMEs, Families and Capital Markets’ took place (online) on 19 June 2020, bringing together policymakers, academics and practitioners to explore some of the key...

The recent publication of Peter Geoghegan's book on British politics highlights some of the severe malaise that afflicts the current British political set up. However, some of these problems, like...

The government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has, in recent years, made it clear that it wants to promote the UAE as a country in which environmental and social issues are prioritised. It has...

We have recently been commissioned by Edward Elgar to curate a Research Handbook on Global Capital Markets. It is timely for a Research Handbook to take stock of the key developments in global...

The European Commission has been looking at crowdfunding as an important alternative source of funding for SMEs (as part of its Capital Markets Union program and FinTech Action Plan) and has...

In my latest research contribution, I analyse the regulatory framework of crowdfunding in Switzerland, the UK and the USA. After describing crowdfunding and its potential as an alternative means to...

The years 2017 and 2018 saw an influx of ventures raising substantial amounts of money through initial coin offerings (ICOs). The Ethereum blockchain greatly facilitated the spectacular surge of ICOs...

On Friday 12 June, the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow (the Corporate and Financial Law Research group) jointly hosted a full-day webinar entitled ‘Does the global pandemic signal a paradigm...