An unfamiliar term in the not-too-distant past, "net zero" has become a headline-maker in the business and financial world with the growing importance of climate change. Succumbing to increasing pressure, companies and financial institutions around the world have come to adopt net-zero...

Global consensus is growing on the contribution that corporations and finance must make towards the net-zero transition in line with the Paris Agreement goals. However, most efforts in legislative instruments as well as shareholder or stakeholder initiatives have ultimately focused on public...

The transition to a sustainable economy currently involves a fundamental transformation of our capital markets. Lawmakers, in an attempt to overcome this challenge, frequently seek to prescribe and regulate how firms may address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns by formulating...

Global consensus is growing on the contribution that corporations and finance must make towards the net-zero transition in line with the Paris Agreement goals. However, most efforts in legislative instruments as well as shareholder or stakeholder initiatives have ultimately focused on public...

In capital markets around the world, calls for greater transparency regarding holdings of cash-settled equity derivatives (in particular Contracts for Difference or CfDs) have arisen due to the increased use of CfDs to gain control or to influence the management of prominent companies on all...

In the wake of the economic crisis of 2008/09 the debate about the desirability of control-enhancing mechanisms that deviate from the traditional one-share-one-vote standard has been reinvigorated. This debate can be seen in the discourse of policy makers and academics that advocate the...

The financial crisis has brought about a revival of state protectionism across the globe. Most Western leaders have made a virtue of big government and state intervention; bail-outs and Sovereign Wealth Funds have been among the first responses to the economic contraction. Company law rules are...

The economic case for the recent proposal on a European ‘Capital Markets Union' is obvious. However, the name is more symbolic than real, and the substance falls short of proposing a fully unified capital market across the EU. This short paper identifies several shortcomings of the project. In...

The pandemic crisis, which broke out in early 2020, is still affecting human lives and economic activity around the globe, causing unprecedented transformations which were not foreseen just before its onset. The European Union, its citizens and the financial and non-financial firms active...

The recent conflict between Canadian telecommunications provider Telus and US-based hedge fund Mason Capital is the most recent illustration of 'empty voting' – a strategy whereby activist investors eliminate their risk exposure to shares in target companies to pursue idiosyncratic motives. As...