In this paper, we examine the transplantation of British company law into the Cape Colony in the late nineteenth century. The Cape Colony Companies Act of 1892 was like its British counterpart in that it provided minimal investor protection. This meant that promoters were free to choose the...

The Colombia-US 2025 joint interpretation (JI) is the first adopted by the United States since the 2001 NAFTA JI. While it favors state regulatory space, this Perspective argues that its restrictive approach to some provisions and application to pending cases raise familiar concerns about the...

Credit Default Swap (CDS) trading alters equilibrium interactive monitoring of external corporate monitors due to a possible change in private lenders' incentive to monitor client firms. This study explores how audit fees change in response to CDS trade initiation on client firms and how this...

The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) is a comprehensive European Union regulatory framework aimed at harmonizing the crypto-asset market. The existing literature has mainly examined MiCA from a legal perspective, while empirical assessments of industry perspectives remain scarce. In...

The article "Cryptocurrency Regulation in the US and the Czech Republic: A Comparative Analysis of Enforcement and Effectiveness" examines the regulatory frameworks in both countries as they address the rising risks of fraud associated with crypto-assets like cryptocurrencies and Non-Fungible...

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have emerged as a transformative financing mechanism, allowing startups to raise capital through blockchain technology and digital tokens. This paper presents a systematic literature review of 115 articles published between 2016 and 2024, sourced from the Scopus...

The mandatory bid rule (MBR) requires an acquirer in an M&A transaction to make a fair offer to the remaining shareholders when exceeding specific thresholds. This severe encroachment on contractual freedom, which is supposed to protect minority shareholders, should show an impact on the...

EU bonds enjoy high credit ratings thanks to the backing by the EU budget which allows the EU to mobilise resources needed to ensure payments of interest and principal to investors. This memo describes how the EU meets its commitments towards investors.

This paper provides new evidence on the relationship between corporate tax avoidance, and investment inefficiency. Based on a sample of 82,487 firm-year observations across 38 countries, we find that tax avoidance is positively associated with inefficient investments. Particularly, the positive...

We analyze the effect of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on bilateral foreign portfolio investment in equity and debt securities. We find that expropriation risk and the level of a BIT’s investor protection are complementary. Applying a Poisson Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood model to a panel...

International portfolio management is influenced by the existence of "frictions", factors or events that interfere with trade, which are linked in financial literature to market-specific factors, such as available information, restrictions, investor protection, or market liquidity. Given the...

EU bonds enjoy high credit ratings thanks to the backing by the EU budget which allows the EU to mobilise resources needed to ensure payments of interest and principal to investors. This memo describes how the EU meets its commitments towards investors.

Foreign shareholders can avail themselves of legal protection under three different legal regimes: diplomatic protection, international investment law and international human rights law. Adopting a historic and comparative approach, this article tracks the faded role of diplomatic protection for...

The debate over relaxed regulations for exempt offerings and its potential impact on capital formation and investor protection has been rekindled with the introduction of proposed legislation, H.R. 2799 - Expanding Access to Capital Act of 2023. This paper assesses the pros and cons of relaxed...

Issuer choice proposals argue against mandatory securities regulation because market competition alone purportedly constrains exploitation of public investors in primary offerings. Other legal scholars support a mandatory regime. To date, empirical studies have been unable to resolve whether the...

This study investigates whether a policy that aims to protect minority shareholders in young unlisted companies benefits regional outsiders defined as those ventures located in regions that are usually less likely to receive equity finance. It focuses on the UK equity crowdfunding market in...