In this essay we make two major claims. The first is that public legislatures should think seriously about giving maximum effect to the principle of freedom of contract in company law. This would not only give corporate lawyers the tool they need to provide legal services that match the needs of...

In his book, 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed - and What to Do about It,' Harvard Business School Professor, Josh Lerner, explains that governments can only play a limited role in spurring innovation and entrepreneurship....

Over recent decades, the on-going “digital revolution” has transformed many aspects of everyday life. Think of the increased power and shrinking size of personal computers and smartphones; the global expansion of the Internet and the new forms of social interaction that have been created; and,...

We are witnessing a quiet but quick transformation of corporate governance. The rise of digital technologies and social media are forcing companies to reconsider how they organize themselves and structure firm governance. What is interesting is that the corporate governance discussions haven't...

Advocates of blockchain believe that distributed ledger technologies can provide us with a technological infrastructure to challenge the concentrated power of tech giants such as Amazon, Facebook and Google, and create a more equitable, sustainable and decentralized world. This paper considers...

There is something special about venture capital. And this “special something” goes beyond the large financial returns that can come from investing in successful start-ups. At its core, venture capital is about identifying the life-changing innovations of tomorrow and then facilitating the...

The digital transformation is disrupting the financial sector. Venture capital, private equity and hedge funds are also affected. We see more and more firms implement emerging technologies in their investment process. There are several common trends. Big Data analytics and the use of artificial...

The Capital Markets Union (CMU) aims to strengthen capital markets and investments in the EU. In the context of innovative SMEs (start-ups and scale-ups), the CMU's goal is to make more "venture capital" available to these businesses. However, greater volumes of available venture capital can...

In order to encourage meaningful and constructive engagement, countries have promulgated and published stewardship codes. The distinctiveness of such codes is the attempt to create more responsible and purposeful investor engagement. In particular, institutional investors must be viewed – and...

A significant development in the global economy over the last two decades has been the emergence of businesses that organize and define themselves as “platforms.” By platform, we refer to any organization that uses digital or other emerging technologies to create value by facilitating or...