Presents in-depth, comparative analyses of German, UK and US company laws illustrated by leading cases, with German cases in English translation.

An analytical overview of the regulation of shareholder activism in the UK and Germany. The book shows how the comparative legal method can be used in the study of the corporate governance systems of different countries. It deals with the regulation of the governance of listed companies within a wide framework that recognises the importance of company law, securities markets law, standards and internal rule-making.

This research handbook provides a state-of-the-art perspective on how corporate governance differs between countries around the world. It covers highly topical issues including corporate purpose, corporate social responsibility and shareholder activism.

"This book goes back to a symposium held at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign Private and Private International Law in Hamburg on May 15-17 1997"--P. [v].

This is the long-awaited second edition of this highly regarded comparative overview of corporate law. This edition has been comprehensively updated to reflect profound changes in corporate law. It now includes consideration of additional matters such as the highly topical issue of enforcement in corporate law, and explores the continued convergence of corporate law across jurisdictions. The authors start from the premise that corporate (or company) law across jurisdictions addresses the same three basic agency problems: (1) the opportunism of managers vis-à-vis shareholders; (2) the opportunism of controlling shareholders vis-à-vis minority shareholders; and (3) the opportunism of shareholders as a class vis-à-vis other corporate constituencies, such as corporate creditors and employees. Every jurisdiction must address these problems in a variety of contexts, framed by the corporation's internal dynamics and its interactions with the product, labor, capital, and takeover markets. The authors' central claim, however, is that corporate (or company) forms are fundamentally similar and that, to a surprising degree, jurisdictions pick from among the same handful of legal strategies to address the three basic agency issues. This book explains in detail how (and why) the principal European jurisdictions, Japan, and the United States sometimes select identical legal strategies to address a given corporate law problem, and sometimes make divergent choices. After an introductory discussion of agency issues and legal strategies, the book addresses the basic governance structure of the corporation, including the powers of the board of directors and the shareholders meeting. It proceeds to creditor protection measures, related-party transactions, and fundamental corporate actions such as mergers and charter amendments. Finally, it concludes with an examination of friendly acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and the regulation of the capital markets.

At the end of the twentieth century it was thought by many that the Anglo-American system of corporate governance was performing effectively and some observers claimed to see an international trend towards convergence around this model. There can be no denying that the recent corporate governance crisis in the US has caused many to question their faith in this view. This collection of essays provides a comprehensive attempt to answer the following questions: firstly, what went wrong - when and why do markets misprice the value of firms, and what was wrong with the incentives set by Enron? Secondly, what has been done in response, and how well will it work - including essays on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US, UK company law reform and European company law and auditor liability reform, along with a consideration of corporate governance reforms in historical perspective. Three approaches emerge. The first two share the premise that the system is fundamentally sound, but part ways over whether a regulatory response is required. The third view, in contrast, argues that the various scandals demonstrate fundamental weaknesses in the Anglo-American system itself, which cannot hope to be repaired by the sort of reforms that have taken place. "This collection of papers by leading US and European corporate law scholars provides fresh and rigorous analyses of the recent corporate governance scandals and the strategies devised by regulators to guard against future governance failures." Randall Thomas, John Beasley Professor of Law and Business, Vanderbilt University School of Law, Vanderbilt University.