Exploring the role of public sector audit in emerging democracies and developing countries, this book provides an account of the relationship between the public sector auditor, the legislature and executive government. In particular, it introduces public sector audit's capacity to assess government agencies' compliance with the law and their management of taxpayer or internationally funded programs and services. The volume: c Explores the Australian model of public sector audit. c Provides a definition of a supreme Audit Institution (SAI) and the role and responsibilities of the public sector auditor. c Examines the authority necessary for the SAI to function effectively. c Discusses likely future reform of the SAI's legal framework. c Illustrates how audit can be used to strengthen democratic institutions in emerging market economies. It will be of use to researchers, academics and students interested in the critical issues surrounding audit in general and public sector audit in particular. It will also be a valuable guide to practitioners in this area.

First published in 1999, this volume provides an overview of company laws in South East Asia, North East Asia and the Pacific. The chapters adopt a standard format to allow for comparisons to be made as well as highlighting key features of company laws in each jurisdiction. The contributors are experts in their fields and present practical and policy related insights. The book also contains some useful overviews of company law themes in Asia.

Expands the field by approaching the issue using a qualitative methodology; Presents a compliance perspective within the legal sector; Draws upon responses from a section of the legal profession that can be extremely hard to access for research purposes; Provides international comparisons throughout.

The corporate objective, namely, in whose interests a company should be run, is the most important theoretical and practical issue confronting us today, as this core objective animates or should animate every decision a company makes. Despite decades of debate, however, there is no consensus regarding what the corporate objective is or ought to be, but clarity on this issue is necessary in order to explain and guide corporate behaviour, as different objectives could lead to different analyses and solutions to the same corporate governance problem. In addition to the study on the corporate objective in Anglo-American jurisdictions, the discussion of this topic in the context of China is also very important on the grounds that China has become the second largest economy in the world and is playing an increasingly significant role in global affairs. Though a socialist state, China has also been relying heavily on the corporate vehicle as the most important business organisational form to ensure its rapid economic development since its market reforms in 1978. Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means's observation made over eight decades ago that large public companies dominate the world remains true today, not only in the West but also in China. The regulation and governance of such companies will have a material impact on the further development of the Chinese economy, which could in turn directly affect the world economy. Company law and corporate governance therefore receive much attention and have become a vital issue in China. Although the current focus is primarily on corporate performance, the fundamental question at the heart of corporate governance, namely the corporate objective, is still unresolved. Contrary to the widely held belief that the corporate objective should be maximising shareholder wealth, this book seeks to demonstrate that the shareholder wealth maximisation approach is both descriptively inaccurate and normatively unsuitable. As an antithesis

A consensus has emerged that corporations have societal and environmental responsibilities when operating transnationally. However, how exactly corporations can be held legally accountable for their transgressions, if at all, is less clear. This volume inquires how regulatory tools stemming from international law, public law, and private law may or may not be used for transnational corporate accountability purposes. Attention is devoted to applicable standards of liability, institutional and jurisdictional issues, and practical challenges, with a focus on ways to improve the existing legal status quo. In addition, there is consideration of the extent to which non-legal regulatory instruments may complement or provide more viable alternatives to these legal mechanisms. The book combines legaldoctrinal approaches with comparative, interdisciplinary, and policy insights with the dual aim of furthering the legal scholarly debate on these issues and enabling higher quality decision-making by policymakers seeking to implement regulatory measures that enhance corporate accountability in this context. Through its study of contemporary developments in legislation and case law, it provides a timely and important contribution to the scholarly and sociopolitical debate in the fastevolving field of international corporate social responsibility and accountability.

This book examines the role and potential of derivative actions in shareholder protection in public limited companies. Derivative actions have been a focal point of legislators' agendas on shareholder protection, in the past few decades, throughout Europe and beyond. Nevertheless, there remain jurisdictions, such as Greece, which are still devoid of this remedy. Against this backdrop, this book examines whether and how the derivative action may improve shareholder protection, constituting thus a mechanism that justifies legislative attention. It does so in three parts. First, it analyses the desirable role derivative actions assume in protecting shareholder property, monitoring corporate management and mitigating agency costs, alongside their economic implications, introducing the reader to the contemporary international debate on the topic. Having set the desiderata, the second part proceeds with the comparative analysis of Greek, German and UK law - jurisdictions that have recently reformed their provisions on shareholder protection - examining not only the law on derivative actions and their Greek counterpart remedy but also mechanisms of shareholder protection that do, or could, assume functions similar to those of the derivative action. By critically assessing the merits and failures of the respective UK, German and Greek shareholder protection laws, the book then proceeds to offer (in Part III) a model framework of shareholders' derivative litigation for jurisdictions considering reform. Written in an accessible format, it will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in this important aspect of company law and corporate governance.

This book explores the intersection of two emergent and vibrant fields of study in international human rights law: transitional justice and corporate accountability for human rights abuses. While both have received significant academic and political attention, the potential links between them remain largely unexplored. This book addresses the normative question of how international human rights law should deal with corporate accountability and violations of economic, social and cultural rights in transitional justice processes. Drawing on the Argentinian transitional justice process, the book outlines the theoretical and practical challenges of including corporate accountability in transitional justice processes through existing mechanisms. Offering specific insights about how to deal with those challenges, it argues that consideration of the role of all actors, and the whole spectrum of human rights violated, is crucial to properly address the root causes of violence and conflict as well as to contribute to a sustainable and positive peace. This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to students and scholars of transitional justice, human rights law, corporate law and international law.

The insolvency of multinational corporate groups creates a compelling challenge to the commercial world. As many medium and large-sized companies are multinational companies with operations in different countries, it is important to provide appropriate solutions for the insolvency of these key market players. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the cross-border insolvency theories, practical solutions and regulatory solutions for the insolvency of multinational corporate groups. Whilst the book recognises certain merits of these solutions, it also reveals the limitations and uncertainty caused by them. An analysis of the provisions and tools relating to cross-border insolvency of multinational corporate groups in the new EU Regulation on insolvency proceedings 2015, the UNCITRAL Model Law on cross-border insolvency, the Directive on preventive restructuring frameworks and the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive 2014, along with a study of directors' duties, are included in this book. This book focuses on the insolvency and rescue of non-financial corporate groups. However, it is also important to recognise the similarities and differences between corporate insolvency regimes and bank resolution regimes. In particular, lessons learnt from bank resolution practices may be useful for non-financial corporate groups. This book aims to provide an in-depth examination of the existing solutions for the insolvency of multinational corporate groups. It also aims to view cross-border insolvency of corporate groups within a broad context where all relevant regimes and theories interact with each other. Therefore, directors' duties in the vicinity of insolvency, preventive insolvency proceedings, procedural consolidation, international cooperative frameworks and bank resolution regimes are considered together. This book may appeal to academics, students and practitioners within the areas of corporate law, cross-border insolvency law and financial law.

Today, the corporation plays a dominant role in economics, politics, and societies across the globe. Understanding the corporation means understanding its legal framework but until recently, the origins and evolution of corporate law have received relatively little attention. This Handbook sheds new light on the historical development of both the corporation and business organization law. This extensive collection brings together contributions from an array of international academics to provide the first wide-ranging history of the laws of corporations and business organizations from ancient to modern times. The contributors offer a global exploration of the development of corporation and company law, moving beyond the United States and Western Europe to present studies in Mexico, India and China, as well as addressing the trajectory of scholarly debate. Not only do the contributions examine the growth of the law of public corporation, they also address the development of laws governing other business forms. This Handbook will prove an invaluable resource for corporation law and business scholars, as well as business and legal historians and economists. Contributors include: B. Aronson, A. Aviram, W. Bratton, G. Del Angel, M. Gelter, A. Gomez-Galvarriato, Y. Gonzalez de Lara, T.W. Guinnane, R. Harris, L. Johnson, V. Khanna, T. Kuntz, S. Martinez-Rodriguez, D.T. Mitchell, M.T. Moore, J. Rochat, J. Rubin, T. Ruskola, G. Sandrelli, F.L. Stewart, J.D. Turner, U. Varottil, M. Ventoruzzo, M. Wachter, H. Wells, R.E. Wright

Throughout the world, the Anglo-American model of corporate governance tends to prevail - but no two countries are identical. Governance outcomes in developing and emerging economies often deviate from what theory predicts, due to a wide range of factors. Using insights from New Institutional Economics, Corporate Governance in Developing and Emerging Markets aims to explain the different issues and cultural and legal factors at play, and put forward an alternative governance framework for these economies. Structured in three parts, this text investigates different models of corporate governance; it explores the realities of corporate governance in ten nations, including the 'BRICS' (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and 'MINT' (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) countries; and then considers corporate governance reform. This interdisciplinary text will be a valuable tool for students of corporate governance across Business, Economics and Law; and an equally useful resource for anyone working in or carrying out research in this area.

In Rethinking EU Consumer Law, the authors analyse the development of EU consumer law on the basis of a number of clear themes, which are then traced through specific areas. Recurring themes include the artificiality of the EU's consumer image, the problems created by the drive towards maximum harmonisation, and the unexpected effects EU Consumer Law has had on national law. The book argues that EU Consumer Law has the potential of enhancing the protecting of consumers throughout the EU and could offer a model for consumer law elsewhere in the world, but in order to unlock this potential, there needs to be a rethink with regard to the EU's approach to consumer law and policy.

Enhancing Board Effectiveness seeks to examine the conceptualization and role of the board in a variety of contexts and articulate solutions for improving the effectiveness of the board, especially in developing and emerging markets. Enhancing Board Effectiveness with therefore address the following central questions: To what extent is the concept and role of the board evolving? What rights, powers, responsibilities and other contemporary and historical experiences can enhance the effectiveness of the board, especially in the particular contexts of developing and emerging markets? What socio-economic, political, regulatory and institutional factors/actors influence the effectiveness of the board and how can the policies and practices of such actors exert such influences? In what ways can a reconstructed concept of the board serve as a tool for theoretical, analytical, regulatory and pragmatic assessment of its effectiveness? In examining this issues, Enhancing Board Effectiveness will investigate theoretical, socio-economic, historical, empirical, regulatory, comparative and inter-disciplinary approaches. Academics in the relevant fields of accounting, behavioural psychology/economics, development studies, financial regulation, law and management/organizational studies, political economy and, public administration will find this book of high interest.

The principle of solidarity is particularly important now because it is in juxtaposition to some current self-centered trends in politics: the crises that have upset the world in recent years, such as migrations, hegemonic aspirations, pandemics, and wars, have made self-evident the inadequacy of such selfish politics. It therefore seems very useful to understand the role that solidarity could play in contemporary scenarios. This book thus collects various contributions on the principle of solidarity in international law. Firstly, it reconstructs the foundations of solidarity in law and investigates the origins of the principle. Subsequently, it tries to ascertain if solidarity exists as a principle in international law and, if so, what its scope is. The book then examines the eventual implementation of the principle of solidarity in regional organizations law: the question is whether solidarity is more effective and if it is actually better fulfilled when relationships between states get stronger, such as in regional and sub-regional organizations. Such implementation is notable in EU Law, but the analysis also involves other regional and sub-regional organizations, namely the African Union, ECOWAS, the League of Arab States, and MERCOSUR. This book takes into account not only some distinctive areas of solidarity, such as migration law, or specific institutional contexts where solidarity is a declared principle, objective or value, for example, the European Union, but it also considers whether, and to what extent, the manifestations of solidarity differ in disparate settings, trying to discover the reasons behind such divergences. The book will be of interest to researchers and academics in the areas of International Law, International Organizations Law, European Law, Human Rights Law, Business Law, and Constitutional Law.

Corporate Social Responsibility has for long been on the agenda in the business world and recently, it has also become a political agenda in the European Union. Focusing on international supply chains and their control based on studies of law in several European jurisdictions, this book aims to advance the discussion on the application and enforcement of CSR. Drawing parallels to US and Canadian law, the book explores to what extent private law tools can be used as an enforcement device and it ultimately asks if what we are witnessing is the formation of a new area of law, employing the interplay of contract and tort - a law of "production liability", as a corollary of the concept of "product liability".

This book offers a commentary on the responses to white collar crime since the financial crisis. The book brings together experts from academia and practice to analyse the legal and policy responses that have been put in place following the 2008 financial crisis. The book looks at a range of topics including: the low priority and resources allocated to fraud; EU regulatory efforts to fight financial crime; protecting whistleblowers in the financial industry; the criminality of the rogue trader; the evolution of financial crime in cryptocurrencies; and the levying of financial penalties against banks and corporations by the US Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission.

This book provides a clear overview of the legal rules relating to directors' disqualification in Australia, Germany, South Africa, the UK and the US, and to highlight the differences in the disqualification regimes of these jurisdictions. The book seeks to determine whether disqualification on application should be developed further as a corporate law and corporate governance tool to ensure that individuals who have a proven record of posing a particular risk to the business community, shareholders and creditors, are indeed disqualified from being directors. The book is unique as it provides a single source where the disqualification regimes of all these jurisdictions are explored and compared. The book will appeal to scholars of corporate law, regulators and policy-makers. The book will also be of particular interest to senior managers and directors to determine precisely what the laws regarding disqualification of company directors are, and what type of behaviour might expose them to potential disqualification.

Exploring obstacles to effective compensation of victims of competition infringements, this book categorises the types of victims harmed and the types of losses arisen from these infringements to identify to what extent there is a need for enhanced private competition law enforcement in the European Union (EU) and the best way to address this need. It shows that there is a genuine need for facilitating consumer damages actions and that consumer claims are the only claims that can be pursued in a collective redress action. In order to compensate consumers and overcome barriers to effective enforcement of their right to damages, it structures a collective redress action for consumers by considering the following elements: i. the formation of the group, ii. the type of representative party iii. funding mechanisms and iv. calculation and distribution of damages.

This book provides fair and acceptable solutions to hardship issues in long-term relational supply contracts. This book uses an approach to strike a balance between the traditional approach underlying classical contract law which emphasises the almost absolute prevalence of the principle of pacta sunt servanda and a flexible approach that is based on the principle of clausula rebus sic stantibus. This book argues for an emerging principle of pacta sunt servanda bona fide on the basis of the relational contract theory. Additionally, this book demonstrates how good faith can serve as a foundation for imposing a duty to renegotiate on the parties. The aim of this book is rather to propose how relational contract theory can be applied to the analysis of specific legal rules in general. Lastly, this boos highlights how the duty to renegotiate and the power to adapt a contract can be further developed upon the occurrence of hardship, based on good faith and the relational nature and characteristics of a long-term relational supply contract. This book explores and enriches the existing research on relational contract theory concentrates primarily on its application in domestic contract laws, particularly in the regulation of long-term contracts in American contract law. As an outcome this book provides a more feasible and satisfactory approach for courts or arbitral tribunals to undertake when facing hardship issues in international contract disputes. Overall, hardship themes, long-term relational supply contracts and good faith are examined extensively.

First published in 1983, Modern Partnership Law departs from the traditionally stale treatment of the subject. The amount of effort being made to encourage small businesses has made partnership law particularly relevant. This book contains chapters on partnership finance; employees; partnerships between spouses and legal intervention in partnership law. In an attempt to move away from citing hackneyed nineteenth century English authorities on this subject, greater prominence is given to Commonwealth cases. This book should be a stimulating addition to the list of all law students.

Modern Employment Law covers all aspects relating to the employment relationship between employer and employee at both individual and collective levels. All chapters are absorbing and exact, with nuanced topics such as unfair dismissal, discrimination and trade union law being explored from several different angles. Pedagogical features such as Thinking points and Further reading sections enable students to consolidate and extend their knowledge. Though primarily aimed at LLB students, this book offers a wide-ranging, accurate, authoritative, contemporary and readable guide to modern employment law for all students of the subject, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Although a collaborative effort, each author focused on specific areas of employment law. Ann Lyon examined the statutory rights of employees including topics such as redundancy, unfair dismissal and discrimination and equal pay issues. Charles Barrow had primary responsibility for the introduction, the majority of the contract of employment chapters and the collective aspects of employment law.

This book is a comparative law study exploring the piercing of the corporate veil in Latin America within the context of the Anglo-American method. The piercing of the corporate veil is a remedy applied, in exceptional circumstances, to prevent and punish an inappropriate use of the corporate personality. The application of this remedy and the issues it involves has been widely researched in Anglo-American jurisdictions and, until recently, little attention has been given to this subject in Latin America. This region has been through internal political conflicts that undermined economic development. However, rise of democratic governments has created the political stability necessary for investment and economic development meaning that the corporate personality is now more commonly used in Latin America. Consequently, corporate personality issues have become a subject of study in this region. Drawing on case studies from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina, Piercing the Corporate Veil in Latin American Jurisprudence examines the ingenuity of Latin American jurisdictions to deal with corporate personality issues and compares this method with the Anglo-American framework. Focusing in particular on the influence of two key factors- legal tradition and the uniqueness of each legal system- the author highlights both similarities and differences in the way in which the piercing of the corporate veil is applied in Latin American and Anglo-American jurisdictions. This book will be of great interest to scholars of company and comparative law, and business studies in general.

With the globalisation of markets, the phenomenon of market failure has also been globalised. Against the backdrop of the territoriality of nation state jurisdictions and the slow progress of international law based on the principle of sovereignty this poses a serious challenge. However while the legal infrastructure of globalised markets has a firm basis in formal national and international law, the side effects of economic transactions on public goods such as the environment, human health and consumer interests often escape state-based regulation. Therefore, attention is drawn to the potential of self-regulation by transnational industry. While hypotheses abound which try to grasp this phenomenon in conceptual terms, both empirical and legal research is still underdeveloped. This volume helps to fill this gap, in two ways: firstly by reconstructing self-regulatory settings such as multinational corporations, transnational production networks and industry-NGO partnerships in terms of organisation, problem-solving and legitimation, and secondly, by linking their empirical findings to formal law by examining how legal concepts are reflected in self-regulation, how the law builds on self-regulatory solutions, and how it helps to establish favorable conditions for private governance.

Through a rational reconstruction of orthodox legal principles, and reference to cutting-edge neuro-science, this book reveals some startling truths about the criminal law, its history and the fundamental doctrines that underpin the attribution of criminal fault. While this has important implications for the criminal law generally, the focus of this work is the development of a theory of corporate criminality that accords with modern theory of group agency, itself informed by advancements in contemporary philosophy and social science. The innovation it proposes is the theoretical and practical means by which criminal fault can be attributed directly to the corporate actor, where liability cannot or should not be reduced to its individual members.

The second half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of international economic law as a major force in the international legal system. This force has been severely tested by the economic crisis of 2008. Unable to prevent the crisis, the existing legal mechanisms have struggled to react against its direst consequences. This book brings together leading experts to analyse the main causes of the crisis and the role that international economic law has played in trying to prevent it, on the one hand, and worsening it, on the other. The work highlights the reaction and examines the tools that have been created by the international legal field to implement international cooperation in an effort to help put an end to the crisis and avoid similar events in the future. The volume brings together eminent legal academics and economists to examine key issues from the perspectives of trade law, financial law, and investment law with the collective aim of reform of international economic governance.

The European Union (EU) has emerged as a key actor in the global investment regime since the 1980s. At the same time, international investment policy and agreements, which govern international investment liberalisation, treatment and protection through investor-to-state dispute settlement, have become increasingly contentious in the European public debate. This book provides an accessible introduction to international investment policy and seeks to explain how the EU became an actor in the global investment regime. It offers a detailed analysis of the EU's participation in all major trade and investment negotiations since the 1980s and EU-internal competence debates to identify the causes behind the EU's growing role in this policy domain. Building on principal-agent and historical institutionalist models of incremental institutional change, the book shows that Commission entrepreneurship was instrumental in the emergence of the EU as a key actor in the global investment regime. It refutes business-centred liberal intergovernmental explanations, which suggest that business lobbying made the Member States accept the EU's growing role and competence in this domain. The book lends support to supranational and challenges intergovernmental thinking on European Integration. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of European and regional integration, EU foreign relations, EU trade and international investment law, business lobbying, and more broadly of international political economy.