On 16th November 2009, SUERF, CEPS and the Belgian Financial Forum coorganized a conference "Crisis management at cross-roads" in Brussels. All papers in the present volume are based on contributions at the conference and the SUERF Annual Lecture which followed the event.

This article addresses the proposition advanced by academic and press commentators that European corporation law promotes stockholder welfare better than its U.S. counterpart. Those who express that view often point to the stronger rights afforded to stockholders under the laws of the European...

This paper investigates whether the valuation effect of corporate governance depends on the degree of competition in the companies' product markets in a large international sample covering 14 countries from the European Union (EU). Besides providing external validity of previous U.S.-centered...

This paper argues that in revising the Takeover Bid Directive, EU policymakers should adopt a neutral approach toward takeovers, i.e. enact rules that neither hamper nor promote them. The rationale behind this approach is that takeovers can be both value-creating and value-decreasing and there...

In this paper, we examine the inconclusive debate on regulatory competition in Europe. We demonstrate that the recent expansion in the EU company law has created archetypal underpinning for formation of regulatory competition: the ground-breaking "triptych" of the ECJ on Centros, Überseering,...

When Council Regulation (EC) No 2157/2001 on the Statute for a European Company (Societas Europaea - SE) became effective on 8 October 2004, it offered publicly traded companies, for the first time, a choice between competing company laws, namely the national law of the company’s home state...

This paper analyzes the ECJ's approach towards abusive behavior in company law and assesses the impact that the leading cases since 1999 have had both on business behavior in the EU and on the national law-makers who have responded to the opening of the markets. It is shown that the Court has...

After a slow start, the European Company (Societas Europaea, SE) has become increasingly popular. Beside documenting the growth of this new company type, we examine whether firms choose to incorporate in the SE corporate form because they engage in 'legal arbitrage' by exploiting differences in...

The last decade or so has witnessed a proliferation in the introduction of corporate organisational constructs to facilitate social enterprise across many European jurisdictions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this phenomenon, and provide an (initial) analytical framework through...

This paper tries to offer a review of the literature on the main privatisation methods adopted by the Central and East European Countries which have joined European Union in 2004. After having analysed the major advantages and shortcomes of each privatisation method the paper briefly describes...