Oxford Business Law Blog

Delaware is home to more than half of all public corporations, and its market share among initial public offerings is even higher. Not surprisingly, therefore, an extensive body of literature is...

Trust is an integral aspect of all human relationships. Trust facilitates social cooperation and coordination. Contractual relationships are no exception. Non-legal mechanisms such as reputation and...

In mid 2017, having paid little attention to Artificial Intelligence (AI) beyond noticing that it had replaced “globalisation” as the focus of ambitious middle class conversation, my inbox started to...

2019 marks the ten-year anniversary for the Spector-decision, where the European Court of Justice determined that when an investor is in possession of inside information while trading, it can be...

Law firms don’t just go bankrupt – they collapse. Dewey & LeBoeuf; Bingham McCutchen; Heller Ehrman; Howrey; Thelen. All of these firms and many others have disappeared with extraordinary...

Since the US Supreme Court effectively closed the door to foreign, human rights related claims against businesses under the Alien Tort Statute, courts in the UK, Canada and beyond have seen an...

It has been twenty years since the European Court of Justice issued its decision in Centros Ltd. v. Erhvervs - og Selskabsstyrelsen (Centros). Since that time, Centros has been widely understood as...

India introduced the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (‘IBC’) in 2016 with a view to encourage quick and efficient corporate rescue and restructuring. It follows a UK style ‘insolvency professional in...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) often refers to ‘companies voluntarily going beyond what the law requires to achieve social and environmental objectives during the course of their daily...

March 2019 marked the twentieth anniversary of the landmark Centros case. It was the first of three judgments in which the (then) European Court of Justice (the Court) affirmed companies’ freedom of...

The 2008 financial crisis set off a major debate about the role of accounting for financial stability. Politicians, policymakers and commentators were quick to point to fair-value or mark-to-market...

Although international commercial arbitration has long been considered the preferred means of resolving cross-border business disputes, recent years have seen multiple initiatives seeking to disrupt...

The AI and English Law Launch Conference, hosted at the University of Oxford on the 18th-19th March, introduced themes, issues and questions on the potential and limitations of using artificial...

Recent technological developments require a reconsideration of intermediated securities holding systems. This post presents two recent papers that examine aspects of this issue. Current intermediated...

Due to the rapid growth of passive indexing, three large fund families – Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street – are now the de-facto arbiters of U.S. corporate law controversies. In 9 out of 10...

Some years ago, when the US was about to hit its legally-prescribed debt ceiling and potentially default, a group of legislators had an idea. They proposed that if the government hit the debt limit,...

Art. XXI of the GATT establishes one of the exceptions to the rules of the multilateral trading system. Named a ‘security’ exception, this provision is most frequently invoked to justify trade...

Consumers’ financial choices are often quite complex. For instance, choosing a new credit card entails assessing various features of each card, such as introductory and ongoing interest rates, annual...

In March 2018, the UK and the EU reached an agreement on the terms of an implementation period following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU (Brexit). But in the case of a ‘no-deal Brexit’, ie, if there...

Much of the literature on the Global Financial Crisis understandably focuses on contributors to that crisis, such as rampant deception within the American mortgage markets, or the creation of complex...