Company Law In Context

'Company Law in Context' is an ideal main text for company law courses. David Kershaw places company law in its economic, business, and social context, making more accessible and relevant the cases, statutes, and other forms of regulation. A running case study provides a practical perspective.

Making Sense of Company Law is intended to give students, whether of law or other disciplines, an overall view of the subject of company law, and to stimulate consideration of trends and policy issues in that subject. It explains company law as a matter of (mostly) common sense, stripping away the arcance jargon and peculiar traditional explanations. Further, it shows how company law is connected with other areas of law and with other fields of knowledge, exploring its tensions and contradictions from historical, sociological, economic and jurisprudential points of view.

This brand new text offers a rich learning resource, combining extracts from leading cases and articles with insightful author commentary. This unique approach places employment law in context, enabling the reader to develop a clear and sophisticated understanding of this dynamic area. A running case study provides a practical perspective.

Comparative Company Law provides a systematic and coherent exposition of company law across jurisdictions, augmented by extracts taken from key judgments, legislation, and scholarly works. It provides an overview of the legal framework of company law in the US, the UK, Germany, and France, as well as the legislative measures adopted by the EU and the relevant case law of the Court of Justice. The comparative analysis of legal frameworks is firmly grounded in legal history and legal and economic theory and bolstered by numerous extracts (including extracts in translation) that offer the reader an invaluable insight into how the law operates in context. The book is an essential guide to how company law cuts across borders, and how different jurisdictions shape the corporate lifespan from its formation by way of incorporation to its demise (corporate insolvency) and eventual dissolution. In addition, it offers an introduction to the nature of the corporation, the framework of EU company law, incorporation and corporate representation, agency problems in the firm, rights of stakeholders and shareholders, neutrality and defensive measures in corporate control transactions, legal capital, piercing the corporate veil, and corporate insolvency and restructuring law.

As attention moves rapidly towards comparative approaches, the research and teaching of company law has somehow lagged behind. The overall purpose of this book is therefore to fill a gap in the literature by identifying whether conceptual differences between countries exist. Rather than concentrate on whether the institutional structure of the corporation varies across jurisdictions, the objective of this book will be pursued by focusing on specific cases and how different countries might treat each of these cases. The book also has a public policy dimension, because the existence or absence of differences may lead to the question of whether formal harmonisation of company law is necessary. The book covers 12 legal systems from different legal traditions and from different parts of the world (though with a special emphasis on European countries). In alphabetical order, those countries are: Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, the UK, and the US. All of these jurisdictions are subjected to scrutiny by deploying a comparative case-based study. On the basis of these case solutions, various conclusions are reached, some of which challenge established orthodoxies in the field of comparative company law.

Explores the foundations and evolution of corporate fiduciary law in the United States and the United Kingdom.