OBLB Series

This series of posts is based on contributions to the ‘The Law and Finance of Private Equity and Venture Capital’ conference that took place in Oxford on 22–23 June 2023.

This series features a combination of country-level papers and cross-country papers, all directed to interrogating how corporate restructuring laws were used and/or reformed during the pandemic period, with a view to informing the design of policy responses to mass insolvency risk in future crises, published in a special issue of the European Business Organization Law Review.

This series features posts on the papers presented at a corporate governance conference, hosted and sponsored by Assogestioni, that took place in Rome on 13-14 October 2022, and that will appear in the forthcoming volume Board-Shareholder Dialogue: Policy Debate, Legal Constraints and Best Practices (Luca Enriques and Giovanni Strampelli eds., Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

This book brings together scholars in law, management and finance to reflect upon board-shareholder engagement and aims to enhance awareness of the increasing importance of board-shareholder engagement whilst spreading the knowledge of relevant practices and legal and policy issues across jurisdictions.

This series of posts is based on contributions to a conference of the OBLB on ‘Personalized Law—Law by Algorithm’ that took place in Oxford on 16 June 2022.

This series of posts covers topics around the EU Commission’s proposal for a Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, launched on 23 February 2022.

This series includes posts following the 5th Oxford Business Law Blog Annual Conference: “Business Law and the Transition to a Net Zero Carbon Economy”, a three-day event at which the challenges of business law in supporting the path towards a more sustainable economy were discussed.

As the world-wide implementation of policies committed to decarbonise the economy gains momentum, the 2021 Annual Conference focused on the role of corporate governance in such an epochal socio-economic transition. Exploring issues ranging from climate risk disclosure and carbon commitments credibility to the exit vs voice debate and climate change in boards, the event provided a forum for scholars of business law to discuss how to tackle the questions raised by the transition to a net zero carbon economy.

The programme can be found here.

This series of blog posts covers the ‘Study on directors’ duties and sustainable corporate governance’ prepared by Ernst & Young for the European Commission. The study promised to be highly relevant for future EU policymaking in the area of corporate governance. Topics of this series include directors’ duties, the company’s purpose, corporate disclosures, executive compensation, and engagement with stakeholders. On 23 February 2022, the Commission eventually adopted a proposal for a Directive on corporate sustainability due diligence. Please note our further series on ‘The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive Proposal’ about it.

This series of posts consists of contributions following a 24h global web seminar held by the ECGI and GCGC on 16 April 2020, entitled the 'COVID-19 Crisis and Its Aftermath: Corporate Governance Implications and Policy Challenges'.

The COVID-19 Pandemic is the biggest challenge for the world since World War Two, warned UN Secretary General, António Guterres, on 1 April 2020. Millions of lives may be lost. The threat to our livelihoods is extreme as well.  Job losses worldwide may exceed 25 million.

Beginning in early February 2020, the Oxford Business Law Blog has published posts on how Business Laws could contribute to containing the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and on how they need (or need not) to be adapted to achieve the desired effect. The focus of this series is on finance, financial regulation and insolvency laws. It can also be found in this working paper.

This is a special series of posts based on contributions to the ‘Centros and European Company Law: Twenty Years of Living Dangerously’ conference that took place in Oxford on 15 March 2019.

March 2019 marked the twentieth anniversary of the Centros case (C-212/97), without doubt the most influential judgment rendered by the (then) Court of Justice in the field of European company law. Along with Überseering (2002) and Inspire Art (2003), Centros eased the cross-border mobility of corporations in the European Union. This sparked regulatory arbitrage, chiefly in the form of incorporating continental European firms as English private limited companies. That, in turn, prompted defensive regulatory competition, such as national reviews of legal capital and company formation regimes, and calls for a top-down harmonisation of corporate standards.

Against this backdrop, the editors of the Oxford Business Law Blog selected ‘Centros and European Company Law: Twenty Years of Living Dangerously’ as the theme of its third annual conference. Two weeks before Brexit was supposed to become effective, the conference provided a forum to discuss the present and future of European Company Law. In addition, the theme invited a broader reflection on the dynamics of regulatory arbitrage and competition within the European continent and beyond, both in company law and adjacent areas.

This is a special series of posts based on contributions to the ‘Law of Autonomous Systems and the Automation of Law’ conference that took place in Oxford on 8 March 2018.

Advances in artificial intelligence (“AI”) research stand to significantly transform the law: both the way we practice law, and the way law performs its societal functions.

A defining feature of this transformation is the increased autonomy of artificial (computer) agents, and their ability to automate tasks previously performed by humans. Increasingly autonomous, data-driven processes create new challenges for law and policy. These include: how should the application of new technologies, such as machine learning, be regulated to provide adequate space for innovation whilst still protecting consumers and investors in increasingly disintermediated markets? How should data and privacy laws control the use and application of personal data in autonomous systems? How should liability be attributed or distributed where a (semi-) autonomous agent causes harm or loss? How does legal education and training need to change to equip the lawyers of tomorrow with the skills needed to manage increasingly automated legal processes? And, how should autonomous systems be designed so as to maximise their resilience to cyberattacks?

Against this backdrop, the academic editors of the Oxford Business Law Blog selected “The Law of Autonomous Systems and the Automation of Law” as the theme of its 2018 annual conference. The conference took place on 8 March 2018 at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford. It was organized around 4 roundtable discussions, on the following themes: (i) Smart Contracts and Dispute Resolution; (ii) FinTech; (iii) LegalTech; (iv) Cybersecurity and Data Control. Conference participants were asked to present their ideas on a topic relating to one of the roundtable themes and, following the conference, to submit a blog post for a special series of the Oxford Business Law Blog on “Law and Autonomous Systems”.

This series of posts covers an array of legal issues following the UK's decision to leave the European Union. They were published after the formal withdrawal process under Article 50 TFEU was initiated on 29 March 2017. At the time, the UK and the EU were still expected to reach a withdrawal agreement within two years.