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...

Section 913 of the Dodd-Frank Act requires the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to conduct a study regarding gaps or deficiencies in the regulation of broker-dealers and investment advisers. These firms often perform similar functions but are regulated differently under an antiquated...

The seminal paper by La Porta et al. on ‘Law and Finance’ empirically examined whether there is a causal link between high levels of shareholder protection and financial development. Subsequent studies of this ‘Law & Finance School’ also addressed many further legal topics. This chapter...

Minority shareholdings have been on the regulatory agenda of competition authorities for some time. Recent empirical studies, however, draw attention to a new, thought provoking theory of harm: common ownership by institutional investors holding small, parallel equity positions in several...

This study is aiming to present (and to a certain extent analyse) the provisions of Articles 24-30 of Directive 2014/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 May 2014 “on markets in financial instruments (…)” (‘MiFID II') – including the relevant provisions of the...

This paper contains the tables of contents, legislation and cases, the introduction and the index of a book published by Cambridge University Press (2008). The cover text reads as follows: "On the one hand, it can be argued that the increasing economic and political interdependence of countries...

This paper contains the European Company Law Experts' response to one of the main issues raised in the European Commission's Action Plan of 12 December 2012, namely how to make corporate governance codes more effective. The concept of “codes' effectiveness” has two meanings: effectiveness of...

This paper contains the European Company Law Experts' response to the report of the European Commission of 28 June 2012 on the application of the Takeover Bids Directive of 2004 and the reform initiatives announced. For evaluating these initiatives the rationale of the mandatory bid rule is...

Though now possible, no European state is competing for incorporations, and this is unlikely to happen in a general fashion. In this paper I argue, however, that the possibility of one state competing for one specific segment of the market for incorporations should not be ruled out altogether....

The derivative action exerted by shareholders (rectius, by a single shareholder or by a minority of them) falls within the wider topic of the defence of shareholder minorities. Considered as one of the pillars of corporate governance, the above mentioned subject tends to be a control tool as to...