The harmonization of company law has always been on the agenda of the European Union. Besidesthe protection of third parties affected by business transactions, the founders had two other objectives: first, promoting freedom of establishment, and second, preventing the abuse of such freedom. The European Commission issued its Company Law Action Plan in 2003. In this volume researchers of the Jan Ronse Institute for Company Law of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven present five chapters on the main priorities of the Action Plan: capital and creditor protection,corporate governance, one share one vote, financial reporting, and corporate mobility. The book also includes responses and ensuing discussions by reputed European company law experts.

A collection of essays examining the conflict between EU law and company law, covering a broad range of topics including takeovers, mergers and restructuring, sovereign wealth funds, and proportionality of ownership and control.

The business corporation is one of the greatest organizational inventions, but it creates risks both for shareholders and for third parties. To mitigate these risks, legislators, judges, and corporate lawyers have tried to learn from foreign experiences and adapt their regulatory regimes to them. In the last three decades, this approach has led to a stream of corporate and capital market law reforms unseen before. Corporate governance, the system by which companies are directed and controlled, is today a key topic for legislation, practice, and academia all over the world. Corporate scandals and financial crises have repeatedly highlighted the need to better understand the economic, social, political, and legal determinants of corporate governance in individual countries. Comparative Corporate Governance furthers this goal by bringing together current scholarship in law and economics with the expertise of local corporate governance specialists from twenty-three countries.

The transfer of companies’ registered office about production activities of goods and services, it is an operation in which both the EU doctrine and case law have increasingly been converging during last decade. It matches to the phenomenon of company’s “localization” (and de-localization) as a strategic leverage for managing issues into European economic system. The practice is clearly recalling the companies’ freedom of establishment for economic reasons (and tax) as the engine of the European integration that guarantees to companies the way to survive to a global market and the possibility to develop their economic strategy as well as the greater competition with foreign companies.

Offers comprehensive coverage of the key topics and emerging themes in private sector corporate governance.

Corporate governance encompasses the free enterprise system, which is treated comprehensively in this book from a German perspective. This distinguishes the book from other books written in English in this subject area, not only because of the comprehensive way it covers German corporate law and corporate governance, but also because of the fact that it provides international and European perspectives on these important topics. This second edition is an extensively revised and updated version of the first edition, in particular with a view to the worldwide debt crisis. The authors provide readers with an overview of the unique features of German business and enterprise law and an in-depth analysis of the organs of governance of German public limited companies (general meeting, management board, supervisory board). In addition, approaches for reforms required at the international level are also suggested and discussed, including, among others, the unique interplay and dynamics of the German two-tier board model with the system of codetermination, referring to the arrangement of employees sitting on the supervisory boards of German public limited companies and private companies employing more than 500 employees; also covered are significant recent legal developments in Europe. The book highlights the core function of valuation and financial reporting at the international, European and German levels, with accounting as the documentary proof of good corporate governance. It also expands the scope of the first edition by a treatment of the German financial sector, global corporate finance and governance, and by including a new chapter on compliance of corporate governance laws, rules and standards in Germany. As far as comparative law is concerned, new developments in the area of corporate governance in the EU, the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance and corporate governance in the US, the UK and Australia are covered. The book is addressed to researchers, practitioners and basically anyone with an interest in the complex, but intriguing areas of corporate law and corporate governance.

Corporate finance theory seeks to understand how incorporated firms address the financial constraints that affect their investment decisions. This is achieved by using varied financial instruments that give holders different claims on the firm's assets. Recent scholarship in this area explores precisely how legal mechanisms affect corporate finance and the development of financial markets. The legal environment is crucially important in explaining the choices that companies make about their capital structure. This book combines company law, capital market regulation and commercial law to give readers a detailed understanding of the legal and regulatory issues relating to corporate financial transactions. Informed by insights from the theoretical and empirical work of financial economists, the book examines, from a legal perspective, key elements of corporate financing structures and capital markets in the UK. The authors' practical experience of transactions and regulatory issues ensures that thorough scholarly inquiry and critical reflection are complemented by an assured understanding of the interface between legal principles and rules as they are documented and in their actual operation.