The number of hedge funds and the assets they have under management has increased in recent years. This increase became significantly more pronounced after the market downturn in 2001. Hedge funds can help investors to benefit from volatile and even sinking stock markets. However, despite the prominent use of the word "hedge" in their name, such funds rarely offer a safe hedge against risk, given that they depend heavily on skill-based investment techniques and often invest in highly speculative financial instruments. Nevertheless, such funds received no specific treatment in the legislation of such major markets as Germany and the United States for years. Against the backdrop of international regulatory concern for hedge funds, the Institute for Law and Finance (ILF), in cooperation with Deutsches Aktieninstitut e.V. (DAI), brought together leading scholars, lawyers and bankers, to assess the risks, opportunities and regulatory challenges that hedge funds present. At the time of the conference, German lawmakers were still discussing the need and possible content of a new law. The fruit of their discussions was the German Investment-Modernization Act (Investmentmodernisierungsgesetz), which entered into force on January 1, 2004, and increased the attractiveness of offering hedge fund products in the German market. This inaugural volume of the Institute for Law and Finance Series contains the proceedings of the ILF/DAI May 2003 conference entitled "Hedge Funds: Risks and Regulation," and presents papers discussing the economic characteristics of and regulatory strategies for addressing hedge funds. The first two papers examine hedge funds from an economic perspective. Alexander M. Ineichen, Managing Director and Global Head of AIS Research at UBS, reveals the economic reality of hedge funds from the myths that has surrounded them. Then Franklin R. Edwards, Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Futures Markets of the Columbia Business School in New York explains how the regulation of hedge funds should be tailored to their core economic reality and the goals of financial stability and investor protection. Next, Marcia L. MacHarg, a partner of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, Ashley Kovas, a Manager in the Business Standards Department of the Financial Services Authority, London, and Edgar Wallach, a partner of Hengeler Mueller, present the state of the relevant regulatory structures in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, respectively. The book then closes with an analysis of corporate structures used for German hedge funds, offered by Kai-Uwe Steck, a member of the German Asset Management practice group of Shearman & Sterling LLP.

This "Liber Amicorum" is written in honour of Richard M. Buxbaum to celebrate his 70th birthday. It pays tribute to his writings, teachings, editorial and administrative work, which have contributed immensely to the development of the international legal order. The contributions are from international experts in the field of commercial and economic law, corporate law, intellectual property and business law, and give an interesting and valuable account of current economic trends and academic thinking.

With the increasing interest of foreign investors, particularly institutional investors, in European companies, there is a growing need for information on the different regimes affecting the legal status of shareholders. Investors need to be aware of the rights and privileges of shareholders in various jurisdictions in order to participate effectively in companies' voting and decision-making processes. This book provides detailed analysis of the rules and practices in 16 European jurisdictions and the United States, covering issues such as convening the general meeting, depositing and blocking of shares, participation rights, setting of the agenda, voting rights and proxy rules. The authors also aim to make companies aware of practices which may hamper effective shareholder participation and, in comparing the different rules and practices, to identify areas where further harmonisation might be undertaken within the European Community framework. The papers collected here are the result of a conference organised by Professor Theodor Baums, of the University of Osnabruck and Professor Eddy Wymeersch, of the University of Ghent.

The volume contains 23 articles by international experts, both scholars and practioners dealing with the development of institutional investors (such as banks, insurances, investment companies, pension funds etc.), their investment and voting policies, the impact on managements of the companies concerned and related issues. The consequences of the international development on capital markets as well as policy implications for the respective national legislations are treated.

On 9 November 2005 a symposium took place on the realisation of the Takeover Directive in Europe which was attended by experts on takeover law from six Member States. Their papers are compiled in this volume.

(The European Stock Corporation. Implementation questions and perspectives) In October of this year the European stock corporation, or Societas Europaea (S.E.), will be made available in the EU as a European form of company. The discussion concerning a European stock corporation harks back to the 1950's. Then, in 2001, a surprising accord was reached after various failed attempts to establish a standard European stock corporation. However, in many partially decisive areas this accord was only able to be reached through extensive compromises. That's why it's feared that there will not be a standard form of stock corporation, but rather a multitude of nationally characterized and partially quite different European stock corporations. The conference arranged by the "foundational guest lecture series for international banking law" should provide insights from a comparative legal standpoint into the status and content of the implementation efforts in the relevant member nations of the EU. The volume at hand reproduces the lectures held at the conference.

The new German Bond Act has yet to prove itself in practice. As part of a half-day conference, prominent specialists from academia and practice shared their opinions about current problems arising from the new bond legislation. This volume of the conference proceedings documents and archives the delivered presentations. The authors present their views on how to proceed with managing the legal problems that have arisen to date. Similarly, they offer reform suggestions for strengthening Germany s position in the international competition between legal systems."

This volume contains the contributions from the convention "The Future of Clearing and Settlement", which the ILF staged on June 27, 2005, at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University. The first part of the convention was devoted to selected questions about deposit and company law regarding securities safekeeping in the media, including possible alternatives to the applicable law and a comparative law look at Switzerland. At the same time, the analysis of the legal foundation for clearing and settlement offered the opportunity to put the market models for securities settlement, which are actively discussed at present, to the test in the second part of the convention.

["The reform of the law on bonds"] In the past few years, the financing instrument "bonds" was gaining considerable importance on the German capital market, not least because of declining prices on the share market and the lowering of key interest rates by the ECB. On an international level, the German bond market comes in third world-wide behind the American and Japanese markets. The German law on bonds, however, is less popular than the German market. The prevailing German law on bonds is largely codified in the 1899 law on common rights of bond owners. The age of a law is certainly no indication of its quality. However, the law on bonds, particularly, does not meet the practical requirements of a great number of issues and is therefore hardly ever applied. In this respect, Germany is definitely posed to fall behind in the competition between the legal systems. The present volume includes the lectures of a conference on reforming the law on bonds organized by the ILF on 5 February 2004. The Federal government's plan to completely revise the law on bonds was the impetus for this conference. The present contributions aim at being part of the reform discussion and provide suggestions for organizing the future law from the point of view of both the German practice and the foreign legal systems that are most important with respect to bonds.

The publication is dedicated to the late Michael Gruson, who passed away in December 2005. He was one of the worldwide leading lawyers in the field of international banking and capital market law.

Die Autorin untersucht die Entwicklung glaubigerschutzender Normen in der Geschichte des Aktienrechts. Es werden Elemente der Chaostheorie, Evolutionswissenschaft und der Pfadabhangigkeit zu einem dogmatischen Grundgerust der Entwicklung von Rechtsnormen kombiniert und rechtliche Normen und Regelungen des Aktionarsschutzes zu regulatorischen Wirkungseinheiten zusammengefasst. Die Autorin erklart Entstehungsmuster fur identifizierte Paradigmen. Methodisch wird die zweihundertjahrige Geschichte der aktienrechtlichen Glaubigerschutzregelungen in Deutschland erfasst und ihre aktuelle Bedeutung und Zukunftsfahigkeit bewertet. Die Untersuchung ist deshalb zugleich historisch und von besonderer Aktualitat.

Das Buch stellt die historische Entwicklung und gegenwartig komplizierte Ausgestaltung des Bankenaufsichts- und Kapitalmarktrechts in den USA dar. Ein Schwerpunkt liegt auf der Normvorbereitung und -bildung auf internationaler Ebene und dem wechselseitigen Einfluss von internationalen und nationalen Regeln. Der Autorin gelingt ein Bruckenschlag zwischen den ansonsten getrennt voneinander behandelten Gebieten. Sie resumiert, dass Aufsicht und Regulierung immer dem Erfindungsreichtum der Marktteilnehmer hinterherhinken und die Aufsicht zwischen strikter Regulierung und Deregulierung alterniert. Die Analysen zeigen, dass einmal geschaffene Normen und Institutionen schwer zu ersetzen sind und dass Lehren aus einer Finanzkrise schnell vergessen werden.

Der Wettbewerb auf internationalen Absatz-, Kapital- und Arbeitsmarkten zwingt deutsche Unternehmen unter anderem zu erhoehter Flexibilitat bei ihrer Fuhrungs- und Unternehmensorganisation. In jungerer Vergangenheit haben einige namhafte deutsche Unternehmen versucht, diesen Anforderungen durch die Einfuhrung virtueller Holdingstrukturen gerecht zu werden. Dies hat zu Diskussionen in der OEffentlichkeit gefuhrt. Gegenstand dieser Arbeit ist die aktienrechtliche und konzernrechtliche Zulassigkeit der virtuellen Holding. Unter anderem werden die Moeglichkeiten zur Delegation von Aufgaben, zur Organisation des Vorstands, der nachgeordneten Fuhrungsebenen und der Unternehmensbereiche sowie Fragen der Haftung von Vorstanden und sonstigen Fuhrungskraften behandelt.

The governance of the modern corporation is broadly understood as the mechanisms, relations, and processes for balancing the interests of stakeholders. It spells out the rules and procedures for decision-making, accountability and transparency, and distributional rights. Corporate governance thus provides the framework in which corporate objectives are set, the means of attaining them, the kind of performance monitoring required, and by whom. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis and large-scale corporate failures, the issue of corporate governance has repeatedly received the attention of policy-makers and the wider public. Extending the study of corporate governance beyond that of listed corporations sheds new light on the overall performance of corporations in market economies. These include small to medium-sized corporations, nonprofit organisations and philanthropic foundations, public corporations and public-private partnerships, social enterprises and cooperatives, international organisations, and corporations in cyberspace. A decade after the massive failures in the governance of financial corporations, and with continued governance failures in other parts of the economy since then, this volume takes stock and asks: what has been the performance of corporate governance regimes, and have regulatory changes and corporate governance codes made a difference? What are the strengths and weaknesses of current corporate governance systems and codes? How do corporate forms differ in their governance performance, and what have been the experiences across countries? And, finally, what implications for understanding governance behaviour and for policy-makers and regulators come to mind?

Die Studie schliesst eine Forschungslucke, indem sie umfassend die aktienrechtlichen Risikomanagementpflichten von Vorstand und Aufsichtsrat im Umgang mit Liquiditatsrisiken untersucht. Sie umfasst auch die aktienrechtlichen Pflichten bei einer Delegation von liquiditatsrisikobehafteten Geschaftsaktivitaten und -prozessen. Ausgangspunkt ist die Rechtsprechung, die im Nachgang zur Finanzkrise der Jahre 2007-2009 ergangen ist. Im Weiteren geht der Autor den Fragen nach, ob, unter welchen Voraussetzungen und in welchem Umfang die bankaufsichtsrechtlichen Regelungen zur Sicherstellung der Zahlungsfahigkeit von Kreditinstituten "de lege lata" eine Schrittmacherrolle bzw. eine Ausstrahlungswirkung fur den aktienrechtlichen Pflichtenrahmen ausserhalb des Bankensektors haben.

Das Recht der stillen Gesellschaft eroeffnet einen weiten Gestaltungsspielraum. Dieses Werk stellt umfassend die besonderen rechtlichen Anforderungen dar, die fur die stille Beteiligung an einer Aktiengesellschaft gelten. Ausgehend von den Motiven fur die Rechtsformwahl werden die Moeglichkeiten und Grenzen der Vertragsgestaltung dargestellt. Die Darstellung fuhrt von der Begrundung der Beteiligung bis zu ihrer Beendung und berucksichtigt das Personengesellschaftsrecht, das Recht der Fremdfinanzierung der Aktiengesellschaft, das Konzernrecht und das Umwandlungsrecht.

Nach langer Wachstumsperiode ist der deutsche Investmentmarkt in eine Konsolidierungsphase getreten. Als Instrumente in diesem Prozess stehen nur die Aufloesung und die UEbertragung von Investmentfonds zur Verfugung. Die Arbeit untersucht unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der Investmentpraxis alle zivilrechtlichen, aufsichtsrechtlichen und steuerrechtlichen Aspekte, die in diesem Zusammenhang von Bedeutung sein koennen. Hierbei wird nach Publikums- und Spezialfonds differenziert. Die gegenwartige Rechtslage fuhrt jedoch zu Reibungsverlusten bei der Aufloesung von Fonds, die weder im Interesse der Anleger noch der Anlagegesellschaften liegen. Die Verschmelzung von Sondervermoegen koennte diese Probleme mildern. Aus diesem Grund wird die Einfuhrung einer gesetzlichen Regelung der Fusion von Investmentfonds untersucht und im Ergebnis befurwortet.