An important tenet of a burgeoning 'law and finance' literature is that stock market development is contingent upon corporate law offering ample protection to shareholders. This paper addresses this claim, using as its departure point developments occurring in the United States between 1930 and...

The American public company has undergone a fascinating transformation since the mid-20th century. Up to this point, however, a detailed analytical synthesis of the changes involved has been lacking. The Public Company Transformed (Oxford University Press, 2018) correspondingly examines the...

For diffuse ownership to become the norm in large business enterprises investors need to be sufficiently confident to buy shares. Will investors follow through if serious doubts exist concerning the competence of those managing companies? This paper addresses this question, primarily by...

Market forces allegedly are serving to destabilise traditional business structures and cause some form of convergence along quot;Anglo-Americanquot; lines. While this trend has been the subject of much debate, it has not been widely commented on in Australia. Moreover, those analysing corporate...

Share ownership in the United States is widely dispersed instead of being concentrated in the hands of families, banks or other firms. Most of the country's major companies have publicly traded shares and a minority of these have a shareholder that owns enough equity to have any sort of...

Logically, in a corporate governance system where big companies are widely held and control over corporate policymaking is delegated to a cohort of full-time executives, there needs to be quot;goodquot; managers. Still, the relevant literature has had little to say about this variable. This...

An intense academic debate has arisen recently concerning the crucial quot;bedrockquot; that underpins a corporate governance regime where widely-held public companies dominate. In the discourse, little has been said about the contribution of merger activity. The paper seeks to address this gap...

The quot;law mattersquot; thesis posits that a legal regime which allows investors to feel confident about owning a tiny percentage of shares in a firm constitutes the crucial quot;bedrockquot; underlying an economy where widely-held public companies dominate. This paper draws attention to and...

Market forces allegedly are serving to destabilise traditional business structures and cause some form of convergence along quot;Anglo-Americanquot; lines. While this trend has been the subject of much debate, it has not been widely commented on in Australia. Moreover, those analysing corporate...

Market forces allegedly are serving to destabilise traditional business structures and cause a reorientation along quot;Anglo-Americanquot; lines. This paper examines the alleged quot;convergencequot; trend from an historical perspective. The focus is on Britain, since it is the only major...