Documents Armour, John 3 results

"European corporate law has enjoyed a renaissance in the past decade. Fifteen years ago, this would have seemed most implausible. In the mid-1990s, the early integration strategy of seeking to harmonise substantive company law seemed to have been stalled by the need to reconcile fundamental differences in approaches to corporate governance. Little was happening, and the grand vision of the early pioneers appeared more dream than ambition. Yet since then, a combination of adventurous decisions by the Court of Justice, innovative approaches to legislation by the Commission, and disastrous crises in capital markets has produced a headlong rush of reform activity. The volume and pace of change has been such that few have had time to digest it: not least policymakers, with the consequence that the developments have not always been well coordinated. The recent 2007/08 financial crisis has yet again thrown many - quite fundamental - issues into question. In this article, we offer an overview that puts the most significant developments of this decade into context, alongside each other and the changing patterns of corporate structure in European countries."

"Core institutions of UK corporate governance, in particular those relating to takeovers, board structure and directors' duties, are strongly orientated towards a norm of shareholder primacy. Beyond the core, in particular at the inter-section of insolvency and employment law, stakeholder interests are better represented, thanks largely to European Community influence. Moreover, institutional shareholders are redirecting their investment strategies away from a focus on short-term returns, in such a way as to favour stakeholder-inclusive practices. We therefore suggest that the UK system is currently in a state of flux and that the debate over shareholder primacy has not been concluded."

"‘Shareholder rights' are the legal entitlements of shareholders vis-à-vis companies in which they invest. A large body of research has sought to investigate how shareholder rights foster accountability of controllers. The concern has been that without accountability, managers and dominant shareholders will use their power to further their own interests at the expense of outside investors. A contrasting concern is that strengthening shareholder rights may come at the expense of other parties, which may also lead to misallocation of corporate resources. A recently-emerging body of research suggests that the relationship between shareholder rights and social welfare is not monotonic, but rather inverse-U-shaped. We argue that the calibration and impact of shareholder rights depends crucially on the institutional channel(s) through which they are implemented—voting, litigation, and/or market pricing. In particular, the market pricing channel intensifies the effects of shareholder rights in ways that can be excessive. This can harm not only other constituencies but also shareholders, as it can promote short-termism and systemic externalities. These problems are less pronounced for shareholder rights implemented through the voting channel."