Holger Fleischer

Hideki Kanda

Kon Sik Kim

Peter Mülbert

This volume is based on updated presentations delivered at a symposium held in 2017 at Seoul National University. It follows two earlier conference volumes and shares their goal to stimulate the scholarly exchange between company law academics in Germany, China, Japan and South Korea which can be traced back to the late nineteenth century. Contributions from all four jurisdictions include papers on shareholder activism and the disclosure of substantial shareholdings as well as studies on takeover law addressing key questions such as the mandatory bid rule, control premiums, hostile takeovers and pre- and post-bid defences.

Investors Versus Companies

German and East Asian Perspectives on Corporate and Capital Market Law

Paul Davies

Reinier Kraakman

John Armour

Henry Hansmann

Gerard Hertig

Klaus Hopt

Mariana Pargendler

This is the long-awaited third edition of this highly regarded comparative overview of corporate law. This edition has been comprehensively revised and updated to reflect the profound changes in corporate law and governance practices that have taken place since the previous edition. These include numerous regulatory changes following the financial crisis of 2007-09 and the changing landscape of governance, especially in the US, with the ever more central role of institutional investors as (active) owners of corporations. The geographic scope of the coverage has been broadened to include an important emerging economy, Brazil. In addition, the book now incorporates analysis of the burgeoning use of corporate law to protect the interests of "external constituencies" without any contractual relationship to a company, in an attempt to tackle broader social and economic problems. The authors start from the premise that corporations (or companies) in all jurisdictions share the same key legal attributes: legal personality, limited liability, delegated management, transferable shares, and investor ownership. Businesses using the corporate form give rise to three basic types of agency problems: those between managers and shareholders as a class; controlling shareholders and minority shareholders; and shareholders as a class and other corporate constituencies, such as corporate creditors and employees. After identifying the common set of legal strategies used to address these agency problems and discussing their interaction with enforcement institutions, The Anatomy of Corporate Law illustrates how a number of core jurisdictions around the world deploy such strategies. In so doing, the book highlights the many commonalities across jurisdictions and reflects on the reasons why they may differ on specific issues. The analysis covers the basic governance structure of the corporation, including the powers of the board of directors and the shareholder meeting, both when management and when a dominant shareholder is in control. It then analyses the role of corporate law in shaping labor relationships, protection of external stakeholders, relationships with creditors, related-party transactions, fundamental corporate actions such as mergers and charter amendments, takeovers, and the regulation of capital markets. The Anatomy of Corporate Law has established itself as the leading book in the field of comparative corporate law. Across the world, students and scholars at various stages in their careers, from undergraduate law students to well-established authorities in the field, routinely consult this book as a starting point for their inquiries.

A Comparative and Functional Approach

The Anatomy of Corporate Law

Luca Enriques

Klaus J. Hopt

Gérard Hertig

Henry B. Hansmann

Edward B. Rock

This is the long-awaited second edition of this highly regarded comparative overview of corporate law. This edition has been comprehensively updated to reflect profound changes in corporate law. It now includes consideration of additional matters such as the highly topical issue of enforcement in corporate law, and explores the continued convergence of corporate law across jurisdictions. The authors start from the premise that corporate (or company) law across jurisdictions addresses the same three basic agency problems: (1) the opportunism of managers vis-à-vis shareholders; (2) the opportunism of controlling shareholders vis-à-vis minority shareholders; and (3) the opportunism of shareholders as a class vis-à-vis other corporate constituencies, such as corporate creditors and employees. Every jurisdiction must address these problems in a variety of contexts, framed by the corporation's internal dynamics and its interactions with the product, labor, capital, and takeover markets. The authors' central claim, however, is that corporate (or company) forms are fundamentally similar and that, to a surprising degree, jurisdictions pick from among the same handful of legal strategies to address the three basic agency issues. This book explains in detail how (and why) the principal European jurisdictions, Japan, and the United States sometimes select identical legal strategies to address a given corporate law problem, and sometimes make divergent choices. After an introductory discussion of agency issues and legal strategies, the book addresses the basic governance structure of the corporation, including the powers of the board of directors and the shareholders meeting. It proceeds to creditor protection measures, related-party transactions, and fundamental corporate actions such as mergers and charter amendments. Finally, it concludes with an examination of friendly acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and the regulation of the capital markets.

Curtis Milhaupt

Kon-Sik Kim

Over the past ten years, the corporate governance environment in East Asia has undergone a significant transformation. The Asian Financial crisis, together with Japan’s long economic malaise, undermined confidence in the corporate structures, governance practices, and regulatory oversight of firms in the region. Since that time, each of the countries in the region has been a hotbed of legislative, judicial, and market activity in the realm of corporate governance. This book takes stock of the most important recent corporate governance changes in the region and the challenges still to be overcome. The contributors pursue this objective, not by describing laundry lists of legal reforms and problems, but by focused in-depth legal analysis on specific issues facing the separate systems in the wake of - sometimes in spite of - the voluminous reforms and market changes of the past decade. Written by the leading corporate law scholars and policy advisors in East Asia and some of the most renowned scholars of comparative corporate governance in the United States, the papers are methodologically united in their careful attention to the impact, and limitations, of legal reforms on corporate governance in East Asia today.

Transforming Corporate Governance in East Asia

Hideki Kanda

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