In the aftermath following the Asian financial crisis, the World Bank prescribed regulatory reforms as a remedy for weak financial fundamentals. These reforms reflect the claims of the strong form legal origins hypothesis that countries with common law legal traditions have stronger investor...

This study is part of a larger international investigation of the effects of a country's legal origins on the style of business regulation. We employ an innovative 'leximetric' methodology to numerically code the protective strength of Australian corporate law for both shareholder and creditor...

The shareholder and creditor protection indices for Australia are part of a larger international study examining the relationship between a country's legal origins and the extent and character of business regulation, including labour law, and shareholder and creditor protection. The indices...

This article utilises leximetric analysis, which involves the numerical coding of the strength of legal protections, to show changes in levels of shareholder and creditor protection in Australia for the period 1970-2010. This form of analysis, originally developed by La Porta et al, and...

When are shareholders empowered to remove directors from office? This is an important governance issue and is related to the balance of power between shareholders and directors. In the case of a public company, s 203D(1) of the Australian Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) provides that shareholders...

The authors analyse resolutions proposed by shareholders of Australian companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange for the 10 year period from 2004 to 2013. They investigate the number of shareholder resolutions over time, the subject matter of the resolutions, whether the resolutions...

Various explanations have been advanced for why shareholder protection looks the way that it does. These explanations include varieties of capitalism, legal origins and various configurations of social interests. When compared with the United States and the United Kingdom, Australian corporate...

This article describes and analyses the recent significant increase in Australia of resolutions proposed by shareholders focused on environmental, social and governance (‘ESG’) issues. The research is placed in the context of the legal framework in which shareholder resolutions are advanced....

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to some countries, including Australia, enacting temporary changes to their corporate laws to allow virtual meetings of shareholders to be conducted. The purpose of this article is to identify and evaluate the corporate governance arguments arising with a move to...