Insolvency law reform has become a subject of public urgency in many countries in the past two decades and particularly in much of Asia over the last ten years. This volume provides an overview of insolvency laws and related rules and procedures in the countries of East Asia. The book comprises two introductory chapters dealing with issues such as legal culture and cross-border insolvency, before examining the fourteen principal jurisdictions in the region. Each chapter addresses the key themes of different insolvency regimes, such as: the legal system and culture; personal insolvency laws; corporate insolvency rules; court-based schemes of arrangement; winding-up procedures; liquidators; enforcement; and offences. This title will be an invaluable guide to academics, practitioners and policy makers working in the areas of comparative and commercial law.

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.

Looking at key questions of how companies are held accountable under private law, this book presents a succinct and accessible framework for analysing and answering corporate attribution problems in private law. Corporate attribution is the process by which the acts and states of mind of human individuals are treated as those of a company to establish the company's rights, duties, and liabilities. But when and why are acts and states of mind attributed in private law? Drawing on a wide range of material from across the disparate areas of company law, agency law, and the laws of contract, tort, unjust enrichment, and equitable obligations, this book's central argument is that attribution turns on the allocation and delegation of the company's own powers to act. This approach allows for a much greater and clearer understanding of attribution. A further benefit is that it shows attribution to be much more united and coherent than it is commonly thought to be. Looking at corporate attribution across the broad expanse of the common law, this book will be of interest to lawyers across the common law world, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Singapore.

This fourth edition of Business Law offers comprehensive and accessible coverage of the key aspects of business law. Established legal topics such as the English legal system, Contract, Consumer, Intellectual Property, Company and Employment Law, and emerging areas such as Health, Safety and Environmental Law are all addressed in the context of business. The work has been thoroughly updated to include all the major recent developments in business law, such as the new EU Trade Secrets Directive and case outcomes decided since the publication of the last edition. The book also discusses the impact of Brexit. In addition, the book features extensive diagrams and tables, revision summaries, reading lists, and clear key case boxes for easy reference. This book is ideal reading for undergraduate law and business studies students, while also applicable to practitioners and those with a more general interest in business law.

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.

Harmonising Regulatory and Antitrust Regimes for International Air Transport addresses the timely and problematic issue of lack of uniformity in legal standards for international civil aviation. The book focuses on discrepancies within the regulatory and antitrust framework, comprehensively reveals the major legal limitations and conflicts, and presents possible solutions thereto. It discusses possible strategies for multilateralisation and defragmentation of air law, and for international harmonisation of airline economic regulation with fair competition standards. This discussion extends to competition between air transport law and other legal regimes as well as to specific regulatory problems related to air transport. The unique feature of the book is that it reconciles distinct perspectives on these issues presented by renowned aviation and aerospace experts who represent the world's key air transport markets and air law academic centres. By providing unbiased solutions that could serve as a base for future international arrangements, this book will be invaluable for aviation professionals, as well as students and scholars with an interest in air law, economic regulation, antitrust studies, international relations, transportation policy and airline management.

This edited collection brings together leading academics in their respective fields to examine the European Union's impact on media and public policy. It provides an analysis of the broader areas of EU policy and links these together to give a greater appreciation of the nuances and scope of EU regulatory initiatives and their impact on the member states. Under a broad public interest perspective, the authors provide an assessment of the success of EU policy in protecting the public interest in the culture industries and respecting certain normative principles and balancing these with market dynamics.

The Routledge Handbook of Corporate Law provides an accessible overview of current research in the field, from an international and comparative perspective. In recent years there has been an explosion of corporate law research, as this area of law continues to develop rapidly throughout the world. Traditionally, Anglo-American corporate law theory has dominated debates and publications; however, this handbook readdresses the balance by exploring the treatment of corporate law in both Europe and Asia, as well developments in the US and UK. Bringing together a wide range of key thinkers in the field, this volume is divided into three main parts: Thinking about corporate law Corporate law principles and governance Some cross-cultural comparisons Providing up-to-date and authoritative articles covering all the key aspects of corporate law, this reference work is essential reading for advanced students, scholars and practitioners in the field.

This book analyzes in detail how and why people become involved in long-firm (planned bankruptcy) fraud, the similarities and differences between long-firm fraud and other crimes, the links between bankruptcy fraudsters and other professional and organized criminals, the techniques that fraudsters use, and the social and commercial relationships that exist within the operational world of the long-firm fraudster. Extensively researched, the study uses interviews with and documentation from businesspeople, credit controllers, lawyers, judges, police, fraud investigators as well as fraudsters themselves. It also makes use of extensive documentary material from contemporary and historical police and court records. Originally published in the 1980s, the revised edition of this seminal work provides a substantial new introduction written by the author to highlight the changing and unchanging relevance of the findings for a contemporary audience, and the ways in which fraud opportunities and the organization of frauds have modified in the intervening years.

Globalization has become a common phenomenon, yet one that many people experience as a threat not only to their economic existence, but also to their cultural and moral self-image. This volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to provide a theoretical overview of how business ethics deals with the phenomenon of globalization. The authors first examine the origins and development of globalization and its interaction with business ethics, before discussing the impact on and role of national and multinational corporations. The book goes on to examine the relationship between industrialized and developing countries, and explores the place of ethics in globalized markets.

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.

This book explores the rationalities and functions of securities markets and takeover activities. Focusing on the Chinese experience of utilizing the securities market as an effective mechanism of corporate control, this volume analyses the future development of China's financial market in the era of economic globalization. Providing an overview of the historical development of the securities market and a literature review of the economic functions of stock markets, Securities Markets and Corporate Governance also examines the legal regimes governing securities markets and takeovers in some leading corporate economies including the US, Germany, Japan and the UK. This volume then focuses on the Chinese experience, proposing a model which balances internal corporate governance and external market control for China.

This book fills a gap in legal academic study and practice in International Commercial Arbitration (ICA) by offering an in-depth analysis on legal discourse and interpretation. Written by a specialist in international business law, arbitration and legal theory, it examines the discursive framework of arbitral proceedings, through an exploration of the unique status of arbitration as a legal and semiotic phenomenon. Historical and contemporary aspects of legal discourse and interpretation are considered, as well as developments in the field of discourse analysis in ICA. A section is devoted to institutional and structural determinants of legal discourse in ICA in which ad hoc and institutional forms are examined. The book also deals with functional aspects of legal interpretation in arbitral discourse, focusing on interpretative standards, methods and considerations in decision-making in ICA. The comparative examinations of existing legal framework and case law reflect the international nature of the subject and the book will be of value to both academic and professional readers.

The advent of the knowledge economy and society has made it increasingly necessary for law reformers and policy makers to take account of the effects of technology upon the law and upon legal and political processes. This book explores aspects of technology's relationship with law and government, and in particular the effects changing technology has had on constitutional structures and upon business. Part I examines the legal normative influence of constitutional structures and political theories. It focuses on the interrelationship between laws and legal procedure with technology and the effect technology can have on the legal environment. Part II discusses the relationship between government and technology both at the national and international level. The author argues that technology must be contextualized within a constitution and draws on historical and contemporary examples to illustrate how technology has both shaped civilizations and been the product of its political and constitutional environment.

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

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.

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.

This open access volume of the AIDA Europe Research Series on Insurance Law and Regulation brings together contributions from authors with different legal cultures. It aims to identify the legal issues that arise from the intersection of two disciplines: insurance law and corporate/company law. These legal issues are examined mainly from the perspective of European Union (EU) law. However, there are also contributions from other legal systems, enriching the perspective with which to approach these issues.

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 analyses corporate rescue laws, processes and policies prescribed in corporate insolvency or bankruptcy laws, and employment laws of the UK and the US, with a particular focus on how extant employee rights are treated when a debtor employer initiates corporate insolvency proceedings. The commencement of formal insolvency proceedings by an employer affects employees' rights and interests. Employment laws seek to protect employees' rights and interests, while insolvency laws seek to promote corporate rescue, which may entail workforce changes. Consequently, this creates a tension between whose interest insolvency law should give primacy of protection. The book analyses how corporate rescue processes such as administration, pre-pack business sales, company voluntary arrangements, receivership and liquidation impact employee rights and protection during corporate rescue proceedings in both jurisdictions. It goes on to address how the federal system of government in the US and the diffusion of power between federal and state law jurisdictions impact a uniform code of employee protection during Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganisation proceedings. The book considers how an interpretative approach to law (Dworkin's Interpretative Theory of Law) may be used to balance both employee protection and corporate rescue laws during corporate insolvency in the UK and the US. Of interest to academics, students and employment law practitioners, this book examines the tension between corporate rescue laws and employment protection laws during corporate insolvency in the US and the UK and how this tension may be remedied or balanced.

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

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.

This volume examines the circumstances in which a shareholder can bring an action on behalf of a company (a derivative action), exploring how this remedy may be used to ensure good corporate governance, and laying out a theoretical framework and practical guidance for future development of the law. Derivative actions are an important aspect of the continuing debate about corporate governance in the UK, the US and many other jurisdictions worldwide. This book offers a conceptually inclusive approach to thinking about derivative actions by providing a detailed and clear overview, commentary, and a theoretical explanation of the law governing derivative actions in the corporate governance context. Reisberg provides a fundamental reassessment of the nature and objectives of the derivative action, and conceptualizes a new model of the derivative action mechanism. He argues that action should be taken in three areas: (1) conceptual (adoption of a new framework- the 'Functional and Focused Model' set out in the book) (2) strategic (employment of appropriate incentives and fee rules which advance the premises behind the Model) (3) maintaining doctrinal consistency (clarification of the interaction between the derivative action and other remedies available to shareholders) This book offers practical guidance on solving current problems in many jurisdictions based on case law, and on substantive legal, economic, and comparative research. It also provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis and commentary on the regime governing derivative actions under Part 11 of the Companies Act 2006 in the UK.

Since the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 the role of the company in society, especially the role of publicly traded companies, has acquired a political salience that was largely absent in the decades before the crisis. This concern has been reflected in both enhanced reporting requirements and in the latest version of the Corporate Governance and Stewardship Codes applicable to the largest companies. This books analyses these developments in full, as well as the more fundamental proposals for reform of corporate law that have been advanced outside official circles. The book also examines the functions of the five core features of company law-separate legal personality, limited liability, centralized management, shareholder control, and transferability of shares. It finally analyses the legal strategies available for moderating the frictions that these core features nevertheless generate for those providing the necessary inputs for a company's business. Written by one of the field's foremost experts, Paul Davies' Introduction to Company Law provides a comprehensive conceptual introduction to the subject, giving readers a clear framework with which to navigate the intricacies of company law.