Corporate governance reform is currently on the agenda in the European Union, the United States, Japan and in emerging market economies. This book takes a fresh look at the reform debate by focusing on the trade-offs involved in reconciling the diverging interests of shareholders, creditors and managers. It shows how effective corporate governance systems exploit complementarities between the incentives generated by the capital structure, the ownership structure, investor monitoring, takeover threats, and management compensation to minimize the sum of all agency costs facing the public corporation. The book combines a general theoretical treatment with a detailed study of the institutions of corporate governance in Germany, Japan and the United States and a critical assessment of recent reforms.

"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].

Corporate governance is on the reform agenda all over the world. How will global economic integration affect the different systems of corporate ownership and governance? Is the Anglo-American model of shareholder capitalism destined to become the template for a converging global corporate governance standard or will the differences persist? This reader contains classic work from leading scholars addressing this question as well as several new essays. In a sophisticated political economy analysis that is also attuned to the legal framework, the authors bring to bear efficiency arguments, politics, institutional economics, international relations, industrial organization, and property rights. These questions have become even more important in light of the post-Enron corporate governance crisis in the United States and the European Union's repeated efforts at corporate integration. This will become a key text for postgraduates and academics.

Corporate law and corporate governance have been at the forefront of regulatory activities across the world for several decades now, and are subject to increasing public attention following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Law and Governance provides the global framework necessary to understand the aims and methods of legal research in this field. Written by leading scholars from around the world, the Handbook contains a rich variety of chapters that provide a comparative and functional overview of corporate governance. It opens with the central theoretical approaches and methodologies in corporate law scholarship in Part I, before examining core substantive topics in corporate law, including shareholder rights, takeovers and restructuring, and minority rights in Part II. Part III focuses on new challenges in the field, including conflicts between Western and Asian corporate governance environments, the rise of foreign ownership, and emerging markets. Enforcement issues are covered in Part IV, and Part V takes a broader approach, examining those areas of law and finance that are interwoven with corporate governance, including insolvency, taxation, and securities law as well as financial regulation. The Handbook is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary resource placing corporate law and governance in its wider context, and is essential reading for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in the field.

Takes readers through an in-depth examination of many leading industrialized nations and identifies both the drivers that propel corporations towards convergence and the major impediments that stand in the way of convergence. Also examines many mechanisms of convergence such as governance codes, MNCs, and IPOs.

Standard economic models assume that many small investors own firms. This is so in most large U.S. firms, but wealthy individuals or families generally hold controlling blocks in smaller U.S. firms and in all firms in most other countries. Given this, the lack of theoretical and empirical work on tightly held firms is surprising. What corporate governance problems arise in tightly held firms? How do these differ from corporate governance problems in widely held firms? How do control blocks arise and how are they maintained? How does concentrated ownership affect economic growth? How should we regulate tightly held firms? Drawing together leading scholars from law, economics, and finance, this volume examines the economic and legal issues of concentrated ownership and their impact on a shifting global economy.

The 2008-9 financial crisis demands we look anew at the role of corporations, and the working of financial markets around the world. In this book, Masahiko Aoki provides a compelling new analysis of the corporate firm; the role of shareholders, managers and workers; and institutional governance structures.