This paper examines international differences in firms' cost of equity capital across 40 countries. We analyze whether the effectiveness of a country's legal institutions and securities regulation is systematically related to cross-country differences in the cost of equity capital. We employ...

The developments of company law in countries belonging to five legal families illustrate the principle-agent conflicts that company law faces and the range of solutions it offers to cope with them. Comparative company law is about learning from each other's experience in a competitive way, and...

European Company Law has been experiencing rapid development in recent years. In 2003 the European Commission published a first action plan on the further integration of company law in Europe: Modernising Company Law and Enhancing Corporate Governance in the European Union - A Plan to Move...

The paper describes the European Model Company Law Project. Last year, a commission was formed on the initiative of the authors with the goal of drafting a European Model Company Law Act (EMCLA). This project aims neither to force a mandatory harmonization of national company law nor to create a...

This Chapter in a comparative book on private limited liability companies starts with an illustration of the former success of the Dutch limited liability company (BV). Next it addresses the competitive European legal environment within which the Dutch BV has to operate. The study shows how the...

In this paper, I analyse the rise of mandatory structure of bankers' pay in Europe as outcome of criticism of pre-crisis remuneration practices at financial institutions. Whether flawed bankers' pay contributed to the financial crisis is still debated amongst scholars. It appears more likely...

This is the first chapter in a volume on “Boards and Shareholders in European Listed Companies: Facts, Context and Post-Crisis Reforms” (M. Belcredi and G. Ferrarini eds., Cambridge University Press forthcoming 2013). We offer an overview of the volume, placing the same in the context of...

We revisit debates on the regulation of IPOs by analyzing failure rates of IPOs carried out between 1900 and 1913 on the London and Berlin stock exchanges, two of the leading financial markets during the early 20th century. IPOs were regulated more heavily in Germany than in Britain and, as...

In 2008, share prices on U.S. stock markets fell further than they had during any one year since the 1930s. Does this mean corporate governance “failed”? This paper argues “no”, based on a study of a sample of companies at “ground zero” of the stock market meltdown, namely the 37...

The forthright brand of shareholder activism hedge funds deploy became during the 2000s a significant feature of Canadian corporate governance. This paper examines hedge fund activism “Canadian style.” The paper characterizes the interventions hedge funds specialize in as “offensive”...