Conflicts of interests are at the heart of numerous problems in business and finance. The law has not ignored them. The obligation to avoid or manage them finds its roots in the duty of loyalty. This duty is common to both the Anglo-American and Continental European legal traditions. Although...

This paper examines legal rules covering protection of corporate shareholders and creditors, the origin of these rules, and the quality of their enforcement in 49 countries. The results show that common-law countries generally have the strongest, and French-civil-law countries the weakest, legal...

We analyse 161 Italian IPOs on the Italian Stock Exchange in the period 1999-2007, focusing on the empirical praxis of share allocations by underwriters. In Italy, one offering (the public one) is reserved for retail investors and is conducted according to Italian regulation, while the second...