Three Principles of Transnational Corporate Bankruptcy Law: A Review

Abstract: After having discussed the weaknesses of the universalist and territorialist approaches to transnational corporate bankruptcy law, this article argues that a free‐choice régime could combine the advantage of ex post value maximisation of the firm's assets with a comparatively higher degree of ex ante predictability to investors. In addition, it could lead to a better alignment between corporate ownership structures and corporate bankruptcy régimes. Moreover, a free‐choice régime could potentially open the door for regulatory competition in corporate bankruptcy law. However, EC Regulation 1346/00 on insolvency proceedings implements a system of modified universalism, which allows for strategic ex post forum shopping by debtors while keeping the national legislatures’ monopoly in the field of corporate bankruptcy in place. It is suggested that even though it cannot be predicted that a free‐choice régime will pressure state lawmakers to improve their corporate bankruptcy laws, a system of free choice could redirect the law‐making agenda in the EU by focusing the coordination efforts of lawmakers on those issues—such as security interests in property and statutory priority rights—which could negatively affect the proper functioning of the Internal Market, while enabling Member States to customise corporate bankruptcy laws to local preferences and needs.     

The New Insolvency Law and Governance of Corporate Legal Person

Start of the insolvency proceedings influences the two basic problems of corporate governance: restriction about the “soft budget” of corporation and “information asymmetry” between the interior and exterior person. In fact, the insolvency law is a mechanism of the potential exterior supervision. In the insolvency proceedings, most of the information is open to the creditor and to the superintendent, who is liable for protecting the interest of the creditor. The key problems of corporate governance are transparency and information disclosure. The insolvency law provides the power of supervision to the creditor when corporation insolvency. Of importance is that power is conducted by collectivity and supported by judicatory and professional organization. In June 2004, the finance committee submitted the new draft of the insolvency law to the standing committee of the national people’s congress. There are many articles about corporate governance. These articles are generally divided into two kinds, one is restriction on conduct of the supervisors in the period of the insolvency proceedings, and the other is examination of the conduct before the start of the insolvency proceedings. Translated from Jurist Review, Vol. 2, 2005 (in Chinese)     

The Quiet‐Loud‐Quiet Politics of Post‐Crisis Consumer Bankruptcy Law: The Case of Ireland and the Troika

A decade after the Global Financial Crisis, many developed economies continue to strain under excessive household debt. This article presents evidence suggesting that the failure of policymakers to enact debt relief measures may lie in the superior influence of the coordinated and concentrated financial sector over legislative processes, as compared to the diffuse and disorganised interests of consumer debtors. Post‐crisis popular interest in technical issues of personal insolvency law created only a narrow space of political opportunity. Soon these questions returned to the domain of technocratic actors and corporate influence. The article examines this situation through an inter‐disciplinary case study of consumer bankruptcy reform in Ireland under ‘Troika’ supervision. Proposals initially billed as assisting over‐indebted households developed into increasingly creditor‐friendly legislation in ‘quieter’ stages of technocratic decision‐making. The stark implications of these findings highlight obstacles to resolving household debt problems and consequent risks of economic and political instability.     

市场经济条件下国企人才管理模式的策略构想

在社会主义市场经济条件下,国有企业在改革中应坚持什么体制,如何经营管理,在人事制度改革中应采用怎样的人才管理模式,一直是经济学家、企业领导者十分关注的重要问题。本文在调查研究的基础上,提出了＂建立优秀的企业文化体系与社会认知系统＂等国有企业人才管理的宏观思路和策略构想,以此为研究国有企业人才资源管理模式的改革提供参。     

The development of insolvency law in Ghana

Insolvency is a phenomenon of increasing importance yet Ghanaian lawmakers and scholars shun the subject. The increasing access to finance across the country, however, raises significant concern regarding the treatment of over-indebtedness. This article explores the development of insolvency law in Ghana setting out the various stages of the life of the first through to the current laws enacted in the country. The research finds that while the current law dealing with personal insolvency is a relatively new legislation embracing key insolvency choices, the law dealing with corporate insolvency is dated depriving ailing companies the benefit of modern rescue efforts.     

论破产重整中的公司治理——美国经验及其借鉴

破产重整中公司治理结构在现实上必然会产生一些张力和变化,破产公司治理在宏观上与破产重整的立法目的密切相关,因此构建公司治理结构首先就要受制于破产债务人在破产重整或者破产清算之间所做出的选择。     

Green-Building and Renewable-Energy Insurance Claims: Where Are We Now?

What kind of insurance claims might arise out of clean-energy initiatives and the associated risks? This article examines these issues, including those associated with construction or conversion of so-called green buildings, e-waste, carbon sequestration, alternative fuels, and other environmental matters that continue to raise a host of novel issues. In addition to more traditional risks, e.g., changing and potentially contradictory energy-efficiency rules have become a litigation issue in Albuquerque and elsewhere. There are simple, practical ways to manage these various environmental risks and many insurance companies are responding with new coverage products. The elements and structure of these programs also provide insight into what kind of claims (and disputes) may arise.     

中国的跨界破产法:现状、问题及发展

在研究中国破产法的现状（集中在有关跨界破产的立法空白及不成熟的司法实践）和引起广泛关注的广东国际信托投资公司破产案的基础上，作者根据国际上的最新发展，特别是联合国国际贸易法委员会跨界破产示范法和欧盟破产程序规则中的一些重要原则，对中国的跨界破产立法提出了若干建议：在普遍性原则与地域性原则的基础问题上，应当采取较为开放的态度，并应设计具体的制度去支持；在管辖权方面，既要维护中国债权人的利益，同时也需要适当的管辖权自限；最后，应注意加强跨界破产案件中的国际合作，对外国破产程序给予适当的承认与协助。     

Understanding the New Regulatory Governance: Business Perspectives

This article considers business understandings of two of the principal features of the new regulatory governance. First, it focus on attempts to place greater responsibility for risk regulation on business and asks how well equipped they are to manage this. Second, it examines the decentering of the state and considers how business organizations view the influence of nonstate actors on their business regulation. These issues are discussed with reference to data from two different research projects in the United Kingdom. The findings question the implicit assumptions the new regulatory governance makes about how well equipped businesses are to manage the risks they generate and how able nonstate influences are to influence the full range of businesses.     

Bankruptcy Regulations and the New German Insolvency Law from an Economic Point of View

Some fundamental incentive effects are analyzed which result from alternative insolvency law arrangements. Thereby ex-ante effects, which refer to decisions before the occurrence of the insolvency—in particular the credit decisions and the use of credit, are distinguished from ex post effects, which refer to the time after insolvency has begun—in particular the utilisation of the seizable assets of the debtor. A brief discussion of some fundamental criticism of the former West German bankruptcy and composition regulations follows and the essential changes of the new Insolvency law which has come into effect on January 1, 1999 are presented. Finally a procedure is discussed which could contribute to the solution of some further existing incentive problems.     

完善我国破产管理人监督机制的构想

完善的监督机制是破产管理人公正、公平履行职责的保障,且其作为一项成功的法律制度已在国外实施多年。但迄今这样的监督机制在我国破产法中尚未形成。在比较分析国内外破产管理人监督机制的基础上,提出:我国应增设专门化的监督机关———监督人;赋予监督主体必要的监督权利,建立破产管理人的“重大事项”报告制度;明确划分监督主体的监督权限,构建和谐通畅的监督机体。     

A Primer on State Insurance Guaranty Associations

In the wake of our nation's financial crisis, protection against insurer insolvency is more critical than ever to the insurance-buying public. All U.S. jurisdictions provide partial statutory protection in the event of insurer insolvency through the creation of various state insurance guaranty associations that are governed by statutes primarily based on a model act promulgated by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Guaranty associations are an integral part of each state's regulatory process for addressing insurer insolvency. Through a matrix of state-specific enabling statutes, state insurance guaranty associations levy and collect assessments from member insurers, pay statutorily defined “covered” claims, and defend against appropriate claims that are in litigation. Together with the domestic regulator of the insolvent insurer (usually the commissioner or superintendent of insurance) and the deputy liquidator (typically approved by the court presiding over the liquidation process and selected by the commissioner or superintendent of insurance as statutory liquidator), the guaranty association community (comprised of associations located in virtually each state in which a policyholder resides) functions as a unified system to manage and at least partially mitigate the impact of an insurer insolvency.     

New Governance,Chief Privacy Officers,and the Corporate Management of Information Privacy in the United States: An Initial Inquiry

While the turn from traditional regulation to more collaborative, experimentalist, and flexible forms of governance has garnered significant academic focus, far less attention has been paid to the effects of such “new governance” approaches on regulated firms' understanding of the laws' demands, and on the structures employed within business organizations to meet them. This article targets this analytic gap by examining internal corporate practices regarding consumer privacy, an arena in which the Federal Trade Commission and the states have adopted new governance models. Using data from qualitative interviews with leading corporate Chief Privacy Officers, as well as internal corporate documentation, it examines the way privacy practices have been catalyzed in the shadow of new privacy governance approaches and the combination of regulatory, market, and stakeholder forces they seek to harness. Specifically, it suggests the convergence of a set of practices adopted by privacy officers identified as “leaders,” regarding both high‐level corporate privacy management and the integration of privacy into entity‐wide risk management goals through technology, decision‐making processes, and the empowerment of distributed expertise networks throughout the firm.     

公司社会责任相关问题再探究

近些年来,学者们从不同的学科背景出发,就公司社会责任问题做了大量研究工作,研究成果颇多。但不容回避的是,公司社会责任基本问题仍是极富争议的问题。学者们在公司社会责任的范畴、定位、对象等问题上见仁见智,尚未达成共识。而实践中,公司社会责任缺失愈演愈烈的现状,迫切需要在公司社会责任基本问题上统一认识,以便为公司社会责任的履行提供强有力的理论指引。公司社会责任基本问题有着进一步探讨的空间和价值。     

Science, values and politics: an insider’s reflections on corporate crime research

Diverse social and political forces have long shaped research on corporate crime and its social control in the U.S., and they have responded to this work in plural and contradictory ways. These forces range from the abstract and institutional to the local and personal. In this essay, I reflect on my three decades of research experience in this arena in an examination of these forces and their implications for research and public policy. More overtly than other forms of criminological research, the study of corporate lawbreaking has conjoined issues of values and politics with issues of science. This feature of the work has made consistently problematic such foundational questions as how to define the subject of inquiry, how to study it, and how to communicate about it. While this volatility has contributed to the ongoing marginalization of this research stream in both academic criminology and regulatory policy, it has also created a certain intellectual dynamism that should attract future generations of investigators to these questions, and to greater cross-disciplinary efforts to address them. Such developments may even pave the way to greater consideration of such research by policy-makers, should socioeconomic conditions in the U.S. and around the world raise the public salience of corporate wrongdoing. ‘Why do you want to study corporate managers? We know how they think.’ ‘…a book entitled Corporate Crime automatically puts us on guard to defend the corporations…such a book should never have been written in the first place.’      

"Independence" and the nonprofit board: a general counsel's guide

In the wake of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act regulations that govern the public company sector, standards are emerging to assure that nonprofit corporate boards are maintaining appropriate levels of independence. This Article provides a summation of the current trends in the development of independence standards for nonprofit corporate governance, from both tax and corporate law perspectives. The authors consider independence standards for nonprofit boards of governance and discuss the evolution of independence standards as they relate to the duty of good faith, and the distinction between independence and conflicts of interest. The authors also seek to examine the evolution of current federal regulations and study state models that have been successfully implemented to insure the independence of nonprofit corporations. Finally, the authors propose a set of core guidelines to be considered when addressing board and committee independence issues.     

A review of the evolution and state of transboundary freshwater treaties

Internationally shared basins supply 60 % of global freshwater supply, are home to about 1/3 of the world’s population, and are focal points for interstate conflict and, as importantly, cooperation. To manage these waters, states have developed a large set of formal treaties, but until now these treaties have been difficult to access and systematically assess. This paper presents and makes publicly available the assembly and organization of the largest known collection of transboundary water agreements in existence. We apply for the first time a “lineage” concept to differentiate between independent agreements and groups of legally related texts, spatially reference the texts to a global basin database, and identify agreement purposes, goals and a variety of content areas. The 688 agreements identified were signed between 1820 and 2007 and constitute 250 independent treaties which apply to 113 basins. While the scope and content varies widely, these treaties nominally govern almost 70 % of the world’s transboundary basin area. In terms of content, treaties have shifted from an earlier focus on regulation and development of water resources to the management of resources and the setting of frameworks for that management. While “traditional” issues such as hydropower, water allocation and irrigation are still important, the environment is now the most commonly mentioned issue in treaty texts. Treaties are also increasingly likely to include data and information sharing provisions, have conflict resolution mechanisms, and include mechanisms for participation beyond traditional nation-state actors. Generalizing, treaties have become more comprehensive over time, both in the issues they address and the tools they use to manage those issues cooperatively.     

俄罗斯企业社会责任履行现状及对我国的启示

在俄罗斯政府推动下,俄罗斯企业社会责任在过去近十年内出现了一个新发展。俄罗斯与中国有着类似的转型背景,在企业社会责任的履行方面很大程度上受政府的影响,采取的是自上而下的企业社会责任推进方式。俄罗斯企业社会责任履行过程中政府在承担主体上注重区分不同类型企业的社会责任分层次履行、在推进主体上以政府推进为主导模式、在推进方式上注重"公私协作"等成功举措及主要经验,对于完善我国企业社会责任履行具有重要的借鉴意义。     

公司IT化的若干法律问题

公司ＩＴ化是在现代电子技术的基础上发展起来的一种公司制度，得到了经济发达国家的高度重视；公司ＩＴ化的形式包括公司电子信息化服务、股东会议电子化、股东权行使的电子化等；在公司ＩＴ化过程中，公司电子文件的签名和传输、股东电子表决权等具有自己特殊的规则；我国尚没有公司ＩＴ化方面的规范性文件，应当在借鉴国外经验的基础上，确立公司ＩＴ化的法律规则。     

Integrating the desire–for–control and rational choice in a corporate crime context

The “rational choice” framework, with its focus on risks and rewards, is often used to explain corporate criminality. In this paper, we build on this framework by integrating the notion of “desire‐for‐control.” Although common to many psychologists, the desire‐for‐control, or the general wish to be in control over everyday life events, has not been examined for its relevance in understanding criminal activity generally, or within corporate offending in particular. After demonstrating the importance of desire‐for‐control in the corporate context, we use data from a sample of managers and MBA students to examine the extent to which desire‐for‐control relates to rational‐choice considerations and corporate criminal decision‐making. Results suggest that desire‐for‐control (1) influences the interpretation of rational‐choice considerations and (2) is positively related to corporate criminality even after controlling for a number of important situational‐ and individual‐level factors. Implications for future theoretical and empirical research are addressed.