In this paper, we have distinguished three different positions along the reform strategy spectrum of company law. The first position is located on the left side of the spectrum and closest to stasis - where virtually no effective legal changes can occur and where only the idea of reform clashes...

Publication of the so-called “Panama Papers” focused public interest on how certain politicians, celebrities, and other elites may have used elaborate corporate structures and offshore tax havens to conceal their beneficial ownership of companies and obscure their personal assets. Rather...

In recent years, legal options (ex ante and ex post choices created by law) have gained acceptance in the European Union. Notwithstanding the move toward soft law measures, the EC’s appetite for options or pro-choice company law provisions remains unclear. There are significant barriers...

In US derivative cases, plaintiffs' lawyer fees and monetary awards have a distorting effect on shareholder value. We evaluate the benefits of corporate litigation without these externalities using a dataset for the Netherlands between 2002 and 2013. We find significant abnormal returns within a...

For the last decade economists have been preoccupied with the decline in bank financing to small businesses and entrepreneurs. This effort has produced a better understanding of the obstacles to external financing. We examine the market and policy instruments that in some sense encourage more...

There are numerous studies on the effectiveness of boards that primarily focus on legal formalities, including gender diversity, board size, remuneration, board evaluation and the role of the chairman of the board. While attempting to design a one-size-fits-all framework, scholars approaching...

Direct investments are the preferred vehicle for large institutional investors to have control over their portfolio investments. We study the deal structure of direct investments by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in private equity transactions. We find that SWFs shift from investing in private...

This paper explores the issue of “re-making” corporate law through the prism of the United Nations' recent efforts at reducing legal obstacles experienced by micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in starting and scaling a business. In order to be successful, we recommend that the UN...

With financial institutions increasingly outsourcing their activities, they face a record number of fraud and misconduct cases arising from third-party services. We survey financial institutions to better understand which governance mechanisms may improve the monitoring and management of...