This book focuses on the federalization of corporate governance in the United States from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Although the states traditionally have regulated the sphere of corporate governance - encompassing the relations among and between the subject corporation, its directors, its officers, its stockholders, and other stakeholders - federal law today impacts the governance of publicly-traded companies to a greater degree than ever before in U.S. history. This book discusses the evolution and development of corporate governance from a federal law perspective from the commencement of the twentieth century to the present. It examines the tension between state company law and federal law, analyzes the federal historical developments, explains the ramifications of the federal legislation enacted during the past two decades, and recommends corrective measures that should be implemented. The book accordingly provides an original, historical, and contemporary analysis of the federalization of corporate governance - a subject that impacts this country's economic well-being in a very fundamental way.
This book focuses on the federalization of corporate governance in the United States from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Although the states traditionally have regulated the sphere of corporate governance - encompassing the relations among and between the subject corporation, its directors, its officers, its stockholders, and other stakeholders - federal law today impacts the governance of publicly-traded companies to a greater degree than ever before in U.S. history. This book discusses the evolution and development of corporate governance from a federal law perspective from the commencement of the twentieth century to the present. It examines the tension between state company law and federal law, analyzes the federal historical developments, explains the ramifications of the federal legislation enacted during the past two decades, and recommends corrective measures that should be implemented. The book accordingly provides an original, historical, and contemporary analysis of the federalization of corporate governance - a subject that impacts this country's economic well-being in a very fundamental way.
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Financial Services. Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises
The asymmetry of responsibilities between management and corporate governance both for day-to-day operations and the board’s monthly or quarterly review and evaluation remains an unresolved challenge. Expertise in the area of risk management is a fundamental requirement for effective corporate governance, if not by all, certainly by some board members. This means that along with board committees such as "compensation", "audit", "strategy" and several others, "risk management" committees must be established to monitor the likelihood of certain events that may cause the collapse of the firm. Risk Management and Corporate Governance allows academics and practitioners to assess the state of international research in risk management and corporate governance. The chapters overlay the areas of risk management and corporate governance on both financial and operating decisions of a firm while treating legal and political environments as externalities to decisions undertaken.
The corporation’s ability to avoid the costs of risks that materialize as a result of its pursuit of profits is a departure from the market model. It can easily be seen as an evasion of the obligations that go with being the un-coercing, freely-acting and choosing ‘invisible hand.’ Dramatic corporate collapses and major human and economic disasters due to bad corporate conduct have strengthened the common sense view that, if the corporate directors and officers have made the deliberate act their own in some way, they may be held responsible on the same basis that liberal law holds all individuals responsible for their intended actions in the non-corporate settings. Accordingly, recent decades have seen an increasing number of statutory interventions worldwide that impose direct responsibilities on directors and other corporate officers in respect of a wide range of regulatory regimes: environmental regulation, occupational health and safety and other employment standards, human rights statutes, transportation regimes, consumer and competition laws, protections for creditors and workers against insolvent trading, and the like. Legitimacy crises have pushed legislators to enlarge the number of responsibilities, to increase the amounts of the fines that may be levied and to make it clear that, in some cases, prison sentences will be imposed. This collection of essays describes and analyzes the legal regimes governing directors’ liability for corporate fault and default across eleven important trading jurisdictions. It asks: Are the reform provisions, especially director duties of ‘due diligence,’ sharply enough aimed to attain the goal of corporate accountability? Will it be easy or difficult for defendants to establish that due diligence was exercised? Is it possible that more reliance on self-policing may lead to less documenting and reporting of wrongs and dangers? What impact may schemes of greater self-monitoring have on State regulation? In what ways might corporations react to these demands that they become guardians of the public weal? The authors – each an authority in his or her respective jurisdiction – recognize that the reforms are a reaction to the political problems created by the ill fit of the corporation with the economic and political value systems that we purport to hold dear. As they survey the ways that vibrant economies can frame laws to influence the conduct of directors and companies, they invite further exploration into the political, economic, practical, and evolutionary factors that may explain the convergence and divergence of both statute law and judicial doctrines and the desirability or inevitability of this deeply significant trend.
This book traces the evolution of transnational legal authority in the course of globalization. Representative case studies buttress its conclusion that today transnational authority is multifaceted, a phenomenon that renders unreliable the concepts of territoriality/extraterritoriality as global governance markers.
The corporate governance systems of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States are often characterized as a single 'Anglo-American' system prioritizing shareholders' interests over those of other corporate stakeholders. Such generalizations, however, obscure substantial differences across the common-law world. Contrary to popular belief, shareholders in the United Kingdom and jurisdictions following its lead are far more powerful and central to the aims of the corporation than are shareholders in the United States. This book presents a new comparative theory to explain this divergence and explores the theory's ramifications for law and public policy. Bruner argues that regulatory structures affecting other stakeholders' interests - notably differing degrees of social welfare protection for employees - have decisively impacted the degree of political opposition to shareholder-centric policies across the common-law world. These dynamics remain powerful forces today, and understanding them will be vital as post-crisis reforms continue to take shape.
Rules are no longer merely made by states, but increasingly by international organizations and other international bodies. At the same time these rules do impact the daily life of citizens and companies as it has become increasingly difficult to draw dividing lines between international, EU and domestic law. This book introduces the notion of a ~multilevel regulationa (TM) as a way to study these normative processes and the interplay between different legal orders. It indicates that many rules in such areas as trade, financial cooperation, food safety, pharmaceuticals, security, terrorism, civil aviation, environmental protection or the internet find their origin in international cooperation. Apart from mapping multilevel regulation on the basis of a number of case studies, the book analyses its consequences in relation to forms of legal protection and legitimacy. In that respect it proposes an agenda for research to study how to cope with multilevel regulation. This work offers valuable resources for researchers involved in studying the interplay between international, European and domestic law. For practitioners it offers background information on the ways in which many international rules come into being.
