An important debate concerns the meaning of the duty imposed on company directors to act in the best interests of the company. Are shareholders' interests paramount when directors act in accordance with this duty? To what extent can the interests of stakeholders other than shareholders be...

The authors report the results of an empirical study of the use of debt agreements in Australian personal insolvency law. Debt agreements were introduced into Australian personal insolvency law in 1996 as an alternative to bankruptcy. This alternative has become increasingly popular, and in 2010...

Employee share ownership in Australia has, until recently, been largely unchartered, despite considerable public policy interest in the area. Although empirical research has recently been undertaken into the current incidence and forms of broad-based employee share ownership plans (ESOPs) in...

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has several enforcement options available to it where a company breaches its continuous disclosure obligations by not promptly disclosing price sensitive information. The most recent enforcement option made available to ASIC is the use...

The authors use leximetric analysis, which involves the numerical coding of the strength of legal protections, to document changes in the level of investor (shareholder and creditor) protection and worker protection in Australia for the period 1970-2010. For worker protection, the level of...

Although Employee Share Ownership Plans (ESOPs) are widely used in Australian companies, little is known about why employees participate in these plans. Yet understanding employee motivations for share ownership has significant implications for corporate governance, human resource practice and...

Australian credit card debt has grown rapidly over the last two decades and there were, as at September 2011, 14.9 million credit card accounts in Australia with outstanding balances of $49.2 billion, representing an ownership rate of 87% of the adult population. Credit cards are the second...

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...

Institutional investment in Australia is both highly innovative and complex. The regulatory focus – and associated literature – on institutional investment has been on the sell-side. Considerably less attention has been paid to the buy-side, that is to the institutional investors themselves....