This paper critically examines the conventional view that the lack of fiduciary duty protections for corporate shareholders in civil law systems explains crucial differences in corporate structure and finance. It questions the thesis that the structure of civil law systems militates against the...

Shareholder and public dissatisfaction with executive compensation has led to calls for an annual shareholder advisory vote on a firm's compensation pratices and policies, so-called "say on pay." Proposed federal legislation would mandate "say on pay" generally for US public companies. This...

This article examines shareholder class actions and offers a proposal for reforming this area of litigation. After describing the nature and dynamics of these lawsuits (see Part II), the article in Part III outlines the criticisms of shareholder class actions. These criticisms take two basic...

I analyze the allocation of the power to decide on hostile takeovers between directors and shareholders. My contribution is to show who actually has power in a takeover and what factors are at work to give such power. Although directors are traditionally considered to be in charge in deciding...

This Article explores the influence of the pension system on corporate governance, which has so far received little attention in the corporate law literature. While the shareholder-centric view of corporate governance is strong today, this is a relatively recent development. “Managerial...

Why are shareholder empowerment and activism such controversial issues in the United States today? Other common law jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, have welcomed and encouraged greater shareholder participation and engagement in corporate governance. In the United States, however,...

In this paper we build a new and meaningful shareholder protection index for five countries and code the development of the law for over three decades. Attributing and comparing legal differences by numbers is contrary to the traditional way of doing comparative law and the use of a quantitative...

Because representative shareholder litigation has been constrained by numerous legal developments, the corporate governance system has developed new mechanisms as alternative means to address managerial agency costs. We posit that recent significant governance developments in the corporate world...