Oxford Business Law Blog

Recent studies have purported to show that the wave of board destaggering that has occurred over the past fifteen years has resulted in value destruction amounting to roughly $350 billion or 6.5% of...

The breach of Union law procedure of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) has been in the spotlight recently. In July, the European Banking Authority (EBA) issued a recommendation under the...

The obligation on issuers to disclose inside information 'as soon as possible' is one of the cornerstones of EU securities market regulation. In my paper I explore the EU’s approach to regulating...

In our paper, ‘Creditor Governance’, we investigate the degree to which large creditors exert influence over borrower investment decisions, and whether creditor-influenced changes in firm policies...

‘Equity crowdfunding’—small Internet-based public securities offerings exempt from the usual regulations for such transactions—is an exciting new source for entrepreneurial finance, and New Zealand...

Why are security interests and legal entities both widely used? The prevailing answer in legal scholarship is that both bodies of law exist to partition assets for the benefit of designated creditors...

It is now twenty years since the publication of La Porta et al’s “Law and Finance” paper in the Journal of Political Economy. Although the methodology used in early law and finance papers attracted...

There is a growing sense among academics and practitioners that common ownership—where two firms are at least partially owned by the same investor—is on the rise among publicly-held U.S. firms and...

With the adoption of the Action Plan ‘Financing Sustainable Growth’, the European Commission is taking a range of steps towards encouraging listed companies to conduct their business in a more...

In recent years, Islamic capital markets have flourished in countries with large Muslim populations, while sukuk, or Islamic bonds, have gained traction internationally. Although Malaysia is regarded...

Angel investors have a long history as informal investors within the narrow subset of the private equity (PE) market. The first ‘angel investors’ were wealthy individuals who funded expensive...

Over the past twenty years, a robust secondary market has emerged in the debt of Chapter 11 firms. Critics worry that the trading associated with this market has undermined bankruptcy governance, by...

Executive and non-executive directors with access to private and price-sensitive information have, as insiders, an advantage over other investors when trading in the shares of their firm. Even if...

Two of my recent articles examine securities class action litigation and SEC enforcement against foreign corporations seeking to tap American capital markets (see here and here). To evaluate public...

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...

How do we measure shareholder protection? For more than ten years, the Centre of Business Research (CBR) at the University of Cambridge has developed datasets on shareholder, creditor and worker...

Venture capital (‘VC’) is widely recognized as a crucial driver of economic growth, job creation, and commercialization of cutting-edge technology. In the Singapore context, the VC industry is...

The financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath had a broad impact on how the financial system is understood to work and how it influences the wider economy. Macroeconomists have highlighted the role...

Over the past decade, there has been an explosion in seed financing for early-stage technology startups. Increasingly, this seed financing is channeled to these companies via an entirely new form of...

In May 2016 the Insolvency Service issued a consultation on the corporate insolvency framework in the UK (for discussion see Part I and Part 2 of an earlier OBLB blog by this author). This was...