Ec Regulation Of Corporate Governance

European Company Law Series, Volume 19 Compelling new perspectives on corporate governance – including attention to increased shareholder engagement, long-term value creation, and sustainability – have given rise to major changes in the management of companies. Yet, until this book, there has been no systematic account of the legislative and soft law instruments designed to promote good corporate governance practices across the range of sizes and types of companies. The book analyses the various instruments that legislators and others have used to promote good corporate governance in European companies and assesses their value in practice. Nineteen well-known scholars of business and corporate law delve into how such issues and topics as the following are approached across the spectrum of corporate governance instruments available in Europe: corporate codes of conduct; procedural rules regulating how directors make decisions; rules on board composition and remuneration; regulating boards in small- and medium-sized enterprises; public enforcement of directors’ duties; how digitalisation may affect implementation of corporate governance instruments; reporting rules; rules on the empowerment of minority shareholders; the role of the general meeting; regulation of the market for corporate control; certifications; rules on liability of directors; and role of auditors and accountants. In its in-depth analysis of the benefits and potential disadvantages of each instrument and what may be achieved both at company level and generally, this book will prove of value to all concerned with promoting responsible corporate governance, whether in business, government, or academia.

The European Company Statute is one of the most important pieces of company legislation adopted so far by the European Union. Its aim is to regulate the internal functions of a business operating in more than two European countries. This book provides an analysis of the history, structure, legal basis and likely impact of the ECS.

Uses economic and reflexive governance theories to demonstrate how EC law achieves the necessary balance between integration and regulatory diversity.

This ambitious volume explores the politics of recent changes in corporate governance regulation and the transnational forces driving the process. Corporate governance has in the 1990s become a catchphrase of the global business community. The Enron collapse and other recent corporate scandals, as well as growing worries in Europe about the rise of Anglo-Saxon finance, have made issues of corporate governance the subject of political controversies and of public debate. The contributors argue that the regulation of corporate governance is an inherently political affair. Given the context of the deepening globalization of the corporate world, it is also increasingly a transnational phenomenon. In terms of the content of regulation the book shows an increasing reliance on the application of market mechanisms and a tendency for corporations themselves to become commodities. The emerging new mode of regulation is characterized by increasing informalization and by forms of private regulation. These changes in content and mode are driven by transnational actors, first of all the owners of internationally mobile financial capital and their functionaries such as coordination service firms, as well as by key public international agencies such as the European Commission. The Transnational Politics of Corporate Governance Regulation will be of interest to students and researchers of international political economy, politics, economics and corporate governance.

The European Company Statute (ECS) is one of the most important pieces of company legislation adopted so far by the European Union. Its aim is to regulate, on a voluntary basis, the internal functions of a business operating in more than two European countries at the same time. However, its implementation by companies requires the negotiation of agreements between employers and employees principally on the choice between a one-tier or two-tier system of board structure. While the ECS thereby promotes flexible solutions tailor-made to company requirements, it has failed to achieve full harmonisation of EU company law. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the history, structure, legal basis and likely impact of the ECS, examining its evolution over some 30 years of development and its chances for integrating diverse models of corporate governance across the European Economic Area. The book explores the implications of the ECS for employee participation at various levels in the European company, with country case studies drawn from Greece, Slovenia and the UK. It also analyses certain legal issues, including taxation and the position of companies located in countries without existing systems of employee board-level participation.

In the context of the financial and economic crisis, corporate governance and regulatory supervision failures, Laura Horn investigates one of the defining questions in social power relations in contemporary capitalism: who controls the modern corporation, and why.

This fully updated new edition provides an overview of the law regarding companies, business organizations, and capital markets in Europe, at both the European Union (EU) and Member State levels. It introduces the reader to the EU harmonization programme and describes how this has influenced corporate law in the various EU Member States. The authors describe common denominators as well as differences in the approach of national corporate laws. The authors highlight current and emerging trends in these areas of corporate law, including: the freedom of establishment of companies within the EU; the European harmonization process and Member States’ implementation of EU legislation; employee involvement in business organizations; the division of power between the different corporate bodies; the functioning and regulation of company groups; and cross-border business combinations, takeovers and restructuring tools. The laws of France, Germany and the Netherlands in particular are discussed and contrasted. This discussion also includes the United Kingdom, although no longer an EU Member State. As in earlier editions, the authors demonstrate that analysis and comparison of national corporate laws yield highly valuable general principles and observations, not least because business organizations, wherever located, tend to show a fundamentally similar set of legal characteristics. The Fourth Edition will continue to be of great value to practitioners and academics who wish to acquire a better understanding of European corporate law, in its supranational dimension as well as in the similarities and differences among the various national legal systems. It can also be used as a handbook for comparative corporate law courses.

This new book offers a substantial framework for examining the competence or powers of the EC in the field of company law, and the requirements for the lawful exercise of these powers (the principle of subsidiarity and the observance of Article 43 EC in particular). In order to provide a clear understanding of the practical relevance of this framework, the author tests the provisions of specific EC company law instruments for compatibility with the EC Treaty. Although the substantial body of EC company law that has been built up over the years is covered, the focus is on EC company law instruments which have been adopted in implementation of the 2003 Action Plan. The book includes a survey of the various company law instruments (both pre-and post-Action Plan) which together make up EC company law, and discusses the objectives of EC company law policy. --