Hostile takeovers are commonly thought to play a key role in rendering managers accountable to dispersed shareholders. Yet, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the very significant differences in takeover regulation between the two most prominent practitioners of hostile takeover, the...

On 26 January 2015, the European Commission requested the Informal Company Law Expert Group (ICLEG) to consider the issue of digitalisation of company law and two members, Vanessa Knapp and Jesper Lau Hansen, were charged with producing a response on behalf of the Group. The report begins with...

Entrepreneurs, catalysts for innovation in the economy, are increasingly the object of policymakers' attention. Recent initiatives both in the UK and at EU level have sought to promote entrepreneurship by reducing the harshness of the consequences of personal bankruptcy law. Whilst there is an...

How will artificial intelligence (AI) and associated digital technologies reshape the work of lawyers and structure of law firms? Legal services are traditionally provided by highly-skilled humans — that is, lawyers. Dramatic recent progress in AI has triggered speculation about the extent to...

Many of the world’s largest firms have announced plans to reduce their carbon emissions over the coming decades. Against the backdrop of stuttering climate policy, this development is widely held out as positive. So far, such announcements are largely hortative, with nothing to stop companies...

Mitigating the worst consequences of climate change by transitioning to a net zero economy requires investment on a large scale. Directly pricing emissions, the first-best solution to drive capital reallocation, is considered politically infeasible—so policymakers put their currency in...

Recent work in both the theory of the firm and of corporate law has called into question the appropriateness of analysing corporate law as ‘merely’ a set of standard form contracts. This article develops these ideas by focusing on property law’s role in underpinning corporate enterprise....

Law and economics scholarship has recently begun to investigate the role of social norms in shaping actors' incentives. This paper presents empirical findings on the way in which a group of such norms, known collectively as the 'London Approach', guide the resolution of financial distress by...

This paper reviews the case for and against mandatory legal capital rules. It is argued that legal capital is no longer an appropriate means of safeguarding creditors' interests. This is most clearly the case as regards mandatory rules. Moreover, it is suggested that even an 'opt in' (or...

Law and economics scholarship has contributed greatly to our understanding of corporate insolvency law. This paper provides an overview of this literature. It begins by defining some relevant terminology, and then reviews theories about the goals of insolvency law. It then considers Jackson's...