A globe-spanning group of leading law and finance scholars bring together cutting-edge research to comprehensively examine the challenges legislators face in regulating related party transactions in a socially beneficial way. Combining theoretical analysis of the foundations of efficient regulation with empirical and comparative studies, readers are invited to draw their own conclusions on which regulatory responses work best under differing circumstances. The careful selection of surveyed jurisdictions offers in-depth insight into a broad variety of regulatory strategies and their interdependence with socioeconomic and political conditions. This work should be read by scholars, policymakers, and graduate students interested in a critical, much-debated area of corporate governance.

In a market environment where economic actors conduct themselves as diligent and conscientious managers, the regulation of related party transactions (RPTs) would be largely irrelevant. Unfortunately, the corporate reality is far from an ideal world that is innocent of market abuse and corporate fraud. It remains necessary to protect minority shareholders from the wrongdoings of majority shareholders and to protect all shareholders from opportunistic managerial behaviour. This timely book – the first on the subject since implementation of the European Union’s (EU’s) revised Shareholders’ Rights Directive – provides in-depth analysis of how and to what extent RPTs are covered by existing legal requirements on capital protection and corporate group regulation, highlighting experiences and strategies adopted in Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands as examples for Eastern European countries and in particular Ukraine. Beyond his comparative analysis of the current status, the author offers recommendations for more effective handling of RPTs, investigating such aspects as the following: what constitutes a corporate group and how group issues are regulated in the various legal systems; what constitutes a conflict of interest originating in ownership and control and what types of such conflicts occur; whether RPTs within corporate groups should receive special treatment relative to transactions outside groups; combatting corporate raiding, most often carried out through illegal seizure of corporate assets; approval and disclosure requirements for RPTs; and how information about RPTs is disclosed publicly. Drawing on resources including legislation, case law, scholarship, and intensive discussions with practicing lawyers from several jurisdictions, the author underscores the imperative of establishing limitations and requirements that oblige a company’s officers, shareholders, and other potential related parties to follow certain rules whenever they wish to enter into an RPT. As a contribution to the debate about the convergence between EU corporate law and that of major eastern European states, the book has no peers. Practitioners in both East and West who advise on compliance with regulations for RPTs or represent stakeholders’ interests against abusive RPTs will ensure appropriate remedies and protection mechanisms for their clients.

In the context of corporate groups, related party transactions pose particular challenges. On the one hand, transactions within corporate groups are often economically desirable. The very raison d'être of a corporate group may be to facilitate transaction between its constituent companies. On the other hand, the very frequency, volume, and depth of intragroup transactions make them particularly suitable vehicles for illicitly extracting wealth from a corporation at the expense of minority shareholders and creditors. Moreover, traditional techniques for policing related party transactions, such as judicial fairness review and or requirements that the transaction be approved by disinterested decision-makers can easily become impracticable where, as in the intragroup context, self-dealing transactions are the norm rather than the exception. It is therefore unsurprising that different legal systems have developed additional legal techniques for policing intra-group transactions in the context of corporate groups. The present contribution seeks to provide a survey over these different approaches and explain how they help to reduce the social costs of self-dealing.

The publication reviews provisions covering related party transactions and the protection of minority shareholder rights in 31 jurisdictions, both OECD and non-OECD. In addition, the regulatory and legal systems that have beeen developed in five jurisdictions are reviewed in detail.

This book presents the findings of an OECD policy dialogue with Indian stakeholders on policies to improve the monitoring and prevension of abusive related pParty transactions (RPTs) in India.

'Investor Protection and Corporate Governance' analyzes the impact of corporate governance on firm performance and valuation. Using unique datasets gathered at the firm-level the first such data in the region and results from a homogeneous corporate governance questionnaire, the book examines corporate governance characteristics, ownership structures, dividend policies, and performance measures. The book's analysis reveals the very high levels of ownership and voting rights concentrations and monolithic governance structures in the largest samples of Latin American companies up to now, and new data emphasize the importance of specific characteristics of the investor protection regimes in several Latin American countries. By and large, those firms with better governance measures across several dimensions are granted higher valuations and thus lower cost of capital. This title will be useful to researchers, policy makers, government officials, and other professionals involved in corporate governance, economic policy, and business finance, law, and management.

Advances in Financial Economics Vol. 16 contains a set of empirical papers by a set of global scholars who examine corporate governance and market regulation from a variety of perspectives.