In this essay we make two major claims. The first is that public legislatures should think seriously about giving maximum effect to the principle of freedom of contract in company law. This would not only give corporate lawyers the tool they need to provide legal services that match the needs of...

The European Commission launched a Green Paper on corporate governance aimed largely at listed companies in April 2011. The Green Paper recognizes that institutional investors play a dominant role in the current financial markets, but it criticizes the short-term thinking and practice among...

Entrepreneurs who are driven, ambitious and dream of building a global business that will change the world are going to have to survive the difficult period in the early stage of the life cycle of a company known as the “Valley of Death”. In order to be successful in this challenging task -...

Disruptive innovation creates increasing regulatory challenges. Venture capital’s assessment of innovative products, businesses, and initiatives generates highly relevant institution -- and industry -- specific decentralized information on innovation trends. Using a dataset comprising over...

Over recent decades, the on-going “digital revolution” has transformed many aspects of everyday life. Think of the increased power and shrinking size of personal computers and smartphones; the global expansion of the Internet and the new forms of social interaction that have been created; and,...

Fundraising is one of the biggest challenges for venture capitalists in the wake of the financial crisis, causing some to argue that the venture capital model is broken? Maybe it looks that way, but actually the answer is that fundraising works differently. Indeed, this Paper shows that a...

Venture capital has rebounded thanks to a handful of select venture capitalists. The venture capitalists leading this renaissance are returning to the venture capital model in its most traditional form as a real partner to startups, as a risk-taker, and most importantly as an innovator and...

We examine the impact of lead arrangers' reputation on the design of loan contracts such as spread and fees charged. Controlling for the non-randomness of the lender-borrower match (self-selection bias), we find that the reputation of top tier arrangers leads to higher spreads, and that top tier...

In this paper, we investigate the attitudes of institutional investors, such as hedge funds, insurance companies, mutual funds and pension funds, towards a key corporate governance mechanism, namely executive compensation. We document the preferences they have about both the level and structure...

While small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are important for economic growth and employment, they face numerous obstacles in accessing external finance. In this article, we review recent developments in the availability of financing for SMEs in Brazil, focusing on the greater use of equity...