Trust in the independence of auditors is essential for the functioning of markets. If auditors are not independent or not believed to be independent, transaction costs will rise. In November 2011, the European Commission proposed radical reforms for statutory audits in Europe, fueling heated...

Trust in the independence of auditors is essential for the functioning of markets. If auditors are not independent or not believed to be independent, transaction costs will rise. In our view, structural weaknesses currently impair auditor independence. We therefore put forward several reform...

Among European regulators and in the academic literature diverging criteria have been developed to distinguish multilateral from bilateral trading systems. Depending on which criteria are applied, operators of multilateral systems may or may not organise multilateral trading in the form of a...

While many factors have contributed to the current financial turmoil, its roots can be traced back to misaligned incentives on the micro-level which resulted in numerous potential conflicts of interest. Examining the situation of investors and the various participants responsible for creating...

Statutory auditors serve as an integral device to safeguard confidence in European financial markets. The market for corporate auditing is highly concentrated. A collapse of one of the top four auditing firms could cause a severe lack in the availability of auditing services. In a 2007 Staff...

Codes of conduct are a well-accepted feature of European corporate governance. Listed corporations are obliged to annually state their compliance with a corporate governance code or to explain their non-compliance. Whilst it is agreed that self-commitments to non-statutory rules or standards of...

In a trialogue between Japan, the U.S. and the EU, the corporate governance debate has singled out approaches that strengthen internal controls. With the soft law movement at its core the development points towards more options for the market. The gathering and processing of information by and...

This paper will be published as a chapter of the forthcoming volume ‘Directors & Officers Liability' edited by Simon F. Deakin, Helmut Koziol, and Olaf Riss. It explores D&O liability from a law and economics perspective with a view to identify trade-offs of different legal settings. The paper...

The chapter continues and advances our earlier research on ‘Board Models in Europe’.** We explore ‘The Structure of the Board of Directors’ with a view to the basic governance structure as provided by a board model vis-à-vis techniques of structuring the decision-making body, which can...

Corporate governance today is an integral part of European Union law. This survey addresses selected legal developments with a view to foundations and perspectives of interdisciplinary research on corporate governance. To start with, the most important institution of internal corporate...