Oxford Business Law Blog

Accelerating developments are being observed in machine learning (ML) technology as the capacities for data capture and ever-increasing computer processing power have significantly improved. This is...

The contractarian theory of the corporation holds that a business corporation is a creature of contract and, more specifically, a nexus of incomplete contracts between directors, shareholders,...

The US Bankruptcy Code is the primary source of bankruptcy relief for debtors in the United States. But it is not the only source. Over the years, Congress has occasionally created bespoke bankruptcy...

The frustration (or ‘frustration of purpose’) doctrine excuses a party from its contractual obligations when an extraordinary event completely undermines its principal purpose in making the deal...

No area of company law seems to have generated greater controversy and uncertainty in recent times than corporate attribution. There have been at least seven decisions handed down in the last decade...

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread worldwide like wildfire turning from a public health crisis into what appears to be the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. In addition to measures...

The United States Congress recently enacted the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) which applies to foreign-owned shell companies. It mandates a ‘reporting company’ to provide certain information of...

Entrepreneurship, market-creating innovations and business growth rely on various support mechanisms, one of which is access to credit. Different measures are taken to facilitate access to credit for...

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have been something like the flavour of the month in legal research. In the last years almost every law journal dealt extensively with this phenomenon. The most relevant...

Social enterprises are on the rise worldwide. A recent survey of 1,030 social enterprises found that they generated more than €6.06 billion in revenue, impacted more than 871 million beneficiaries,...

As India implements its new national vision of creating an affable environment for business, laws governing restructuring and dissolution of companies will be at the core of the economic activity...

Many companies enter bankruptcy proceedings seeking to sell their assets. Customer data—such as consumer names, birth dates, purchasing preferences, and contact information—can be among a company’s...

Bilateral Conventions of Establishment (BCEs)—sometimes referred to as Treaties of Establishment or Establishment Treaties—are international instruments concluded between the 19th and 20th centuries...

The recent evolution of corporate whistleblowing has demonstrated the capacity of effective internal whistleblowing systems to support regulatory aims. In light of this, the potential impact of fast-...

The United Kingdom Supreme Court has released its much anticipated judgment in Okpabi v Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned the Court of Appeal’s previous finding that the...

COVID-19 threw Annual General Meetings (AGMs) across the UK and beyond into chaos, leading 2/3 of FTSE 100 companies to close their doors to their shareholders. Yet even before this crisis, AGMs have...

In my new monograph, Corporate Reorganization Law and Forces of Change (OUP 2020), I argue that it is not possible to adopt a fixed or universal conceptual framework in analysing the many different...

Striving to manage the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the Lithuanian government announced a 3-month quarantine throughout the country on 16 March 2020. This meant severe business restrictions or even a...

Despite the intense effort of the EU to harmonise company law, significant differences persist across Member States. In a working paper, which is about to be published as a book chapter (Ziegler,...

In 2002, the European legislature considered that a legal framework to facilitate financial collateral transactions such as repurchase agreements (repos), securities lending and derivatives would ‘...