Corporate Lawyers and Corporate Governance


Book Description

This assessment of the corporate governance role of corporate lawyers in the UK analyses the extent to which lawyers can and should act as gatekeepers, counsellors and reputational intermediaries. Focusing on external and in-house lawyers' roles in both dispersed share-ownership and owner-managed companies, Joan Loughrey highlights the conflicts of interest that are endemic in corporate representation and examines how lawyers should respond when corporate agents provide instructions contrary to the company client's interests. She also considers the legitimacy of 'creative compliance', the ethical arguments for and against lawyers prioritising the public interest over their clients' interests, and their exposure to liability if they fail to perform a corporate governance role. Finally, she considers whether the reforms to the legal profession will promote the lawyer's corporate governance role and advances suggestions for reform.




Advanced Corporation Law


Book Description

Corporate governance has been much in the news in recent years and lawyers are devoting increasing amount of attention to it. The passage of major federal legislation in 2002 (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act a.k.a. SOX) and 2010 (the Dodd-Frank Act) were particularly important developments, generating much new law and, as a result, much new legal work. Curiously, however, the law school casebook market has largely ignored these trends. Corporate governance is regulated by many of the same laws covered in the basic Business Associations course, but increasingly is also regulated by laws--such as SOX and Dodd-Frank--that get short shrift in the typical Business Associations casebook and course. In contrast, those laws are the core focus of the text. In addition to the pertinent laws, the book brings into play sources such as stock exchange listing standards and the rules issued by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and similar quasi-governmental bodies. Importantly, however, lawyers practicing in the corporate governance space must be knowledgeable not only about the law but also best practice. The text therefore makes frequent references to best practice advice drawn from sources such as law firm client memoranda.




Comparative Corporate Governance


Book Description

The business corporation is one of the greatest organizational inventions, but it creates risks both for shareholders and for third parties. To mitigate these risks, legislators, judges, and corporate lawyers have tried to learn from foreign experiences and adapt their regulatory regimes to them. In the last three decades, this approach has led to a stream of corporate and capital market law reforms unseen before. Corporate governance, the system by which companies are directed and controlled, is today a key topic for legislation, practice, and academia all over the world. Corporate scandals and financial crises have repeatedly highlighted the need to better understand the economic, social, political, and legal determinants of corporate governance in individual countries. Comparative Corporate Governance furthers this goal by bringing together current scholarship in law and economics with the expertise of local corporate governance specialists from twenty-three countries.




Corporate Governance Matters


Book Description

Corporate Governance Matters gives corporate board members, officers, directors, and other stakeholders the full spectrum of knowledge they need to implement and sustain superior governance. Authored by two leading experts, this comprehensive reference thoroughly addresses every component of governance. The authors carefully synthesize current academic and professional research, summarizing what is known, what is unknown, and where the evidence remains inconclusive. Along the way, they illuminate many key topics overlooked in previous books on the subject. Coverage includes: International corporate governance. Compensation, equity ownership, incentives, and the labor market for CEOs. Optimal board structure, tradeoffs, and consequences. Governance, organizational strategy, business models, and risk management. Succession planning. Financial reporting and external audit. The market for corporate control. Roles of institutional and activist shareholders. Governance ratings. The authors offer models and frameworks demonstrating how the components of governance fit together, with concrete examples illustrating key points. Throughout, their balanced approach is focused strictly on two goals: to “get the story straight,” and to provide useful tools for making better, more informed decisions.




Corporate Governance


Book Description

This anthology of recent scholarship on corporate governance has been extensively revised and updated. It explores the application of legal doctrine and theory to topical policy issues such as corporate social responsibility, executive compensation, corporate criminality, federalism, and ethical rules for corporate lawyers. It contains materials on recent developments, including the 2008 financial collapse. The book puts into current context long-running debates on fundamental corporate law issues, such as shareholders' ownership of the corporation, director independence, and management's focus on maximizing share price. The new edition contains a new chapter on creditors and bankruptcy. The book is organized around policy issues rather than the doctrinal areas of the basic law school course. It presents diverse views on each issue through various approaches to analyzing corporate law and incorporating doctrine, law and economics, empirical work; history; and organizational behavior. The book is designed for use as the primary text in a course or seminar in corporate governance, but could also serve as supplemental reading in the basic law school corporations course. It includes questions for classroom discussion or self-directed study. The edited selections are generally longer than in a standard law anthology in order to provide a deeper treatment of the issues.




Gatekeepers


Book Description

In the wake of a series of corporate governance disasters in the US and Europe which have gained almost mythic status - Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, HealthSouth, Parmalat - one question has not yet been addressed. A number of 'gatekeeping' professions - auditors, attorneys, securities analysts, credit-rating agencies - exist to guard against these governance failures. Yet clearly these watchdogs did not bark while corporations were looted and destroyed. But why not? To answer these questions, a more detailed investigation is necessary that moves beyond journalism and easy scapegoating, and examines the evolution, responsibilities, and standards of these professions. John C. Coffee Jr, world-renowned Professor of Corporate Law, examines how these gatekeeping professions developed, to what degree they failed, and what reforms are feasible. Above all, this book examines the institutional changes and pressures that caused gatekeepers to underperform or neglect their responsibilities, and focuses on those feasible changes that can restore gatekeepers as the loyal agents of investors. This informed and readable view of the players on the contemporary business stage will be essential reading for investors, professionals, executives and business academics concerned with issues of good governance.




Fundamentals of Corporate Governance


Book Description

Previous edition published in.




Benefit Corporation Law and Governance


Book Description

Corporations with a Conscience Corporations today are embedded in a system of shareholder primacy. Nonfinancial concerns—like worker well-being, environmental impact, and community health—are secondary to the imperative to maximize share price. Benefit corporation governance reorients corporations so that they work for the interests of all stakeholders, not just shareholders. This is the first authoritative guide to this new form of governance. It is an invaluable guide for legal and financial professionals, as well as interested entrepreneurs and investors who want to understand how purposeful corporate governance can be put into practice.




The Governance of Corporate Groups


Book Description

Starting from a discussion of the theoretical underpinning of the place companies occupy in society, this book explores the consequences of adherence to free market contractualist theory, including the lack of regulatory control of a sufficiently robust nature. Professor Dine comments on the absence of a concept of governance of groups from a comparative perspective and considers the consequences of this absence for the conflict of laws. In particular, she highlights the tragic consequences of globalization by transnationals including polarization of income and environmental damage, and suggests a possible legal framework to prevent future damages.




The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Law and Governance


Book Description

Corporate law and corporate governance have been at the forefront of regulatory activities across the world for several decades now, and are subject to increasing public attention following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Law and Governance provides the global framework necessary to understand the aims and methods of legal research in this field. Written by leading scholars from around the world, the Handbook contains a rich variety of chapters that provide a comparative and functional overview of corporate governance. It opens with the central theoretical approaches and methodologies in corporate law scholarship in Part I, before examining core substantive topics in corporate law, including shareholder rights, takeovers and restructuring, and minority rights in Part II. Part III focuses on new challenges in the field, including conflicts between Western and Asian corporate governance environments, the rise of foreign ownership, and emerging markets. Enforcement issues are covered in Part IV, and Part V takes a broader approach, examining those areas of law and finance that are interwoven with corporate governance, including insolvency, taxation, and securities law as well as financial regulation. The Handbook is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary resource placing corporate law and governance in its wider context, and is essential reading for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in the field.