This book offers a general outlook of the legal framework governing companies limited by shares under Italian law for students, scholars and legal practitioners. It contains a presentation of the theory of the firm and its connections with Italian company law, in an effort to move these concepts closer to the understanding of international readers. The Authors have been teaching Italian business law to international students at Bocconi University in Milan for many years and this book owes much to their academic experience. At the same time, however, the Authors have leveraged on their experience as international business lawyers in order to keep the explanation plain and practical to any possible extent.
For many Americans, capitalism is a dynamic engine of prosperity that rewards the bold, the daring, and the hardworking. But to many outside the United States, capitalism seems like an initiative that serves only to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few hereditary oligarchies. As A History of Corporate Governance around the World shows, neither conception is wrong. In this volume, some of the brightest minds in the field of economics present new empirical research that suggests that each side of the debate has something to offer the other. Free enterprise and well-developed financial systems are proven to produce growth in those countries that have them. But research also suggests that in some other capitalist countries, arrangements truly do concentrate corporate ownership in the hands of a few wealthy families. A History of Corporate Governance around the World provides historical studies of the patterns of corporate governance in several countries-including the large industrial economies of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States; larger developing economies like China and India; and alternative models like those of the Netherlands and Sweden.
Europe has known very different systems of company laws for a long time. These differences do not only pertain to the board structures of public companies, where single-tier and two-tier structures can be distinguished, they also pertain to the principles of fixed legal capital. Fixed legal capital is not a traditional ingredient of English and Irish company law and had to be incorpo-rated into these legal systems (only) for public limited companies according to the Second European Company Law Directive of 1976. Both jurisdictions have never really embraced these rules. Against this background, the British Accounting Standards Board (ASB) and the Company Law Centre at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) have initiated and supported a study of the benefits of this legal system by a group of experts led by Jonathan Rickford. The report of this group has been published in 2004. Its result was that legal capital was costly and superfluous; hence, the Second Directive should be repealed. The British government has adopted this view and wants the European Commission to act accordingly. Against this background a group of German and European company law experts, academics as well as practitioners, have come together to scrutinise sense and benefits of fixed legal capital and all its specific elements guided by the following questions: What is the relevant legal concept supposed to achieve? What does it achieve in reality? What criticisms are there? Which proposals or alternatives are available? From the outset the group of experts has endeavoured to cooperate with foreign colleagues, which resulted in very fruitful and pleasant exchanges. This volume contains, besides an executive summary of the results, 16 essays on specific aspects of legal capital in Germany covering also neighbouring fields of law (e.g. accounting, insolvency);7 reports on fixed legal capital in other jurisdictions (France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the U.S.A.) addressing the same questions as the essays on German law. The British initiative disapproves of the Second Directive. The Directive does only deal with public limited companies in Europe, which is reflected in the analysis presented here. It is only concerned with the fixed legal capital of public limited companies, not with capital issues of private companies. The study has arrived at a result that differs completely from that of the Rickford group. It verifies the usefulness of the concept of fixed legal capital and wishes to convince the European Commission of the benefits of the Second Company Law Directive.
This book takes a comparative law and economics approach to the study of corporate governance. It looks at the overall impact of corporate law on separation of ownership and control across different jurisdictions and in doing so reappraises the existing framework for economic analysis of corporate law.
This volume brings together nine chapters by specialist legal historians that address the topic of the scale and size of companies, in both legal and economic history. The bundled texts cover different periods, from the Middle Ages, the Early Modern Period, to the nineteenth century. They analyse the historical development of basic features of present-day corporations and of other company types, among them the general and limited partnership. These features include limited liability and legal personality. A detailed overview is offered of how legal concepts and mercantile practice interacted, leading up to the corporate characteristics that are so important today. Contributors are: Anja Amend-Traut, Luisa Brunori, Dave De ruysscher, Stefania Gialdroni, Ulla Kypta, Bart Lambert, Annamaria Monti, Carlos Petit, and Bram Van Hofstraeten.
Company law is undergoing fundamental change in Europe. All European countries have undertaken extensive reform of their company legislation. Domestic reform has traditionally been driven by corporate failures or scandals. Initiatives to make corporate governance more effective are a feature of recent European law reform, as are measures to simplify and ease burdens on smaller and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). An increasing EU harmonisation is taking place through the Company Law Directives, and the free movement of companies is also facilitated by the case law of the European Court of Justice on the directives and the right to free movement and establishment in the EC Treaty. New European corporate forms such as the European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG) and the European Company (SE) have added new dimensions. At a time of rapid development of EU and national company laws, this book will aid the understanding of an emerging discipline.
The book provides students of European company law courses, scholars and practitioners with an overview. Although company law remains mainly regulated at the level of national laws, it has become important to obtain a systematic view of the main directives in the field of company law, the EU Court of Justice’s jurisprudence, the European Model Company Act and the state of implementation of these directives in the member states of the Union. The book therefore contains, in addition to the illustration of the law laid down by EU legislative bodies and the related soft laws, detailed references to the most important domestic legislations and case laws, in order to make them known and usable as much as possible. Moreover, the book allows identifying the most relevant current legislative trends and the main historical reasons for divergences.
