The Role of Competition in Determining Corporate Governance Outcomes: Lessons from Australia's Corporate Governance System

Successive waves of corporate collapse in every decade of Australia's history suggest that there is a significant unresolved corporate governance problem in Australia. Corporate collapse has been followed by reform but with little effect on the overall pattern of collapse and reform every decade. This article suggests that one of the elements which entrenches corporate governance problems in Australia is the competitive environment in which companies operate, which currently is not regulating management. It is argued that this anti-competitive environment has two significant effects. First, key shareholders have retained controlling blocks of shares as the benefits of control and the costs of unconstrained management are high in such distorted markets. Secondly, management skills have stagnated, so that bad management and regular management failure have become features of the corporate governance system.     

Promoting a more efficient corporate governance in Nigeria through the law

Corporate governance reforms have been viewed as one of the formal means of improving the economic and social welfare of emerging economies. There have been efforts by the Nigerian government, through its agencies, to promulgate codes of best practices for companies in the country. These reforms appear to be ineffective and the codes do not compliment and are not complimented by corporate law. The aim of this paper is to identify the problems that hinder effective corporate governance reforms in Nigeria within corporate law. Using the doctrinal approach, the paper analyses features of the Nigerian corporate governance framework and identifies the problems bedeviling this regime. It argues that the problems stem from (amongst others), state ownership and control, board independence, poor minority shareholder protection, ineffective judicial system and Incomplete disclosure. The paper, by linking the apparent weakness of the extant framework to the attempt to reform outside corporate law, suggests a hybrid of legislation including hard laws, soft laws and other policy proposals to promote an effective corporate governance regime in Nigeria.     

THE OBJECTIVE OF THE COMPANY

The important role that corporate governance has played in a wide range of public companies is self-evident. Recent major corporate failures are more or less related to bad corporate governance and the increasing corporate scandals call for good corporate governance not only in China but all around the world. Corporate governance is principally about how companies are structured and directed, which is indeed a quite broad field. It is a good direction to discuss how to improve the overall corporate governance level in China through the perspective of perfecting shareholder protection. However, while running companies for shareholder interests is getting increasingly more criticisms, the so-called stakeholder model and entity model are raised as alternative approaches. Accordingly, it is the purpose of this paper to find the most appropriate corporate objective which could be applied as the starting point for future corporate governance discussion by providing a right direction for assessing and evaluating corporate performance and accountability of management. Through the comparative studies of the three models, this paper concludes that shareholder primacy is a more effective and efficient approach with regard to advancing social welfare and controlling director’s accountability among others; the other two models cannot justify substituting the shareholder model as the corporate objective.     

法律视域外的公司犯罪治理路径

公司犯罪的治理既要有法律的对策，还应探索法律视域外的路径。在市场导向上。可采取规制市场无序竞争、完善信息合理流动机制、营建公司信用评价体系与合理分配公司社会责任的路径；在伦理规制上，可针对公司的自身伦理、经济行为伦理与环境伦理采取相应的对策。     

Co-evolution of politics and corporate governance

In the OECD countries, there exists a negative cross-country correlation between an economy's degree of employment protection and its degree of corporate ownership dispersion. One explanation is that employees’ political rights influence corporate governance: systems characterized by strong employees’ rights tend to be balanced by strong and concentrated owners. In this approach, the separation between ownership and control is only possible when unions and social democratic parties are sufficiently weak. In this paper we argue that causation runs also in the opposite direction (from strong concentrated ownership to strong employees’ protection) and leads to multiple equilibria characterized by alternative co-evolution paths of politics and corporate governance. To empirically assess our theoretical arguments we estimate a simultaneous equation model for workers rights’ protection and corporate ownership structure determination by three-stage least squares in a sample of 21 OECD countries. We conclude by arguing that the relative relevance of each flow of causation has important economic policy implications.     

论域外公司治理改革实践经验之借鉴

近年来,英美等国开始对其公司治理模式进行了一系列改革,包括制定各种公司治理的原则、指引、章程、鼓励机构投资者参与公司治理、要求公司增强董事会的独立性、在董事会内引入一定数量的独立董事等,希望通过这些措施,增强公司的内部监控力度,以弥补由于外部监控不足所造成的问题.而德日的内部监控模式也开始学习、借鉴和效仿英美的公司治理模式.剖析、借鉴实践中各国公司治理改革经验将对我国公司治理的改进提供有益的帮助.     

试论“超越法律”的企业社会责任

"超越法律"的企业社会责任,是企业负担的那些超出法律强制性义务规定且符合社会价值和期望的责任,确认这种责任的法律规范实为"软法",它主要通过责任目标内化于企业的商业行为和治理结构之中,以实现企业的"自我管制";通过保护利益相关者的实质性和程序性权利,提高利益相关者的谈判抗衡力量以实现市场的自发对抗;并以声誉机制和非政府组织的作用作为责任的实施机制的补充。     

Corporate Governance in Spain (with an Application of the Power Indices Approach)

This paper describes the governance system of Spanish listed firms in the early 1990's. Although the institutional setting of the Spanish Stock Exchanges differs little from other European national markets, we found important differences in several aspects of corporate governance. In particular, some of the standard mechanisms of control (e.g. boards and institutional shareholders) do not play an active role, whereas ownership is relatively concentrated. Moreover, power indices suggest that controlling blocs of large shareholders are very likely to form. We thus conclude that the ownership of shares is a pivotal mechanism in the governance of Spanish corporations.     

The Global Financial Crisis: Learning from Regulatory and Governance Studies

Regulatory and governance studies help locate power and responsibility in the global financial crisis. I argue that corporate and state power worked together in centers like New York and London to shape regulation and that power was spread around the world. In the response to the crisis, responsibility for regulation will remain largely systems‐based rather than centrally directed. However, those systems should be located in the culture of the elites, which are socially and spatially based, as much as in the economics of the markets or the cognition of the firms. And that responsibility has limits, so there should be greater democratic control of finance and less dependence on finance capitalism for essential services, social security, and environment protection.     

职工参与公司控制质疑——对“共决制”的理论与制度分析

职工参与公司控制会改变股东控制公司的传统公司治理模式。主张职工参与公司控制的学者认为 ,现代企业的职工不是向企业提供简单劳动 ,而是对公司做出了人力资本投资 ,因此 ,应该给与职工与股东相同的公司控制权。但给与职工控制权可能会增加公司集体决策的成本 ,不利于公司提高经营效率 ,“共决制”本身固有的弱点也可能使其无法达到预期的目标。德国的“共决制”与其公司治理特点有直接关系 ,不考虑我国的实际状况 ,盲目引进“共决制”可能会不利于我国公司的发展     

中国企业赴美国上市的法律风险和对策

随着大量中国企业赴美国上市,与之相关的法律风险问题也逐渐暴露。当前,中国企业在美国上市的法律风险主要包括集团诉讼风险、证券违法违规处罚风险、退市风险、做空风险和中介机构欺诈风险。因此,中国企业赴美上市应充分了解、熟悉和掌握美国资本市场的相关法律和监管要求,并完善公司治理结构、内部控制和信息披露制度,以及提高应对集团诉讼的能力。     

Ownership structure, regulation and the market for corporate control in the EU banking sector

This paper analyzes the efficiency of shareholder control and hostile takeovers as corporate governance mechanisms in the EU banking sector against the background of the existing corporate governance regulations and different ownership structures of banks in the EU. The results indicate the there is trade-off in EU corporate governance regulation between better investor protection and a higher efficiency of the market for corporate control. The main problem is differences in the ownership structure of banks in the EU banking sector. This implies that EU corporate governance regulations should be customized to the specific ownership structure of banks and not toward harmonising national regulations.     

Recent developments in German corporate governance

This paper provides an overview of the German corporate governance system. We review the governance role of large shareholders, creditors, the product market and the supervisory board. We also discuss the importance of mergers and acquisitions, the market in block trades, and the lack of a hostile takeover market. Given that Germany is often referred to as a bank-based economy, we pay particular attention to the role of the universal banks (Hausbanken). We show that the German system is characterised by a market for partial corporate control, large shareholders and bank/creditor monitoring, a two-tier (management and supervisory) board with co-determination between shareholders and employees on the supervisory board, a disciplinary product–market, and corporate governance regulation largely based on EU directives but with deep roots in the German codes and legal doctrine. Another important feature of the German system is its corporate governance efficiency criterion which is focused on the maximisation of stakeholder value rather than shareholder value. However, the German corporate governance system has experienced many important changes over the last decade. First, the relationship between ownership or control concentration and profitability has changed over time. Second, the pay-for-performance relation is influenced by large shareholder control: in firms with controlling blockholders and when a universal bank is simultaneously an equity- and debtholder, the pay-for-performance relation is lower than in widely held firms or blockholder-controlled firms. Third, since 1995 several major regulatory initiatives (including voluntary codes) have increased transparency and accountability.     

New Governance,Old Norms,and the Potential for Corporate Governance Reform

While the new governance approach to corporate governance offers intriguing ideas about participatory governance, it cannot evade the effects of economic self‐interest. This article addresses three nested concerns relating to the potential of new governance in the corporate context, using three specific examples that illustrate the challenges. The first case illustrates that new governance principles cannot be easily integrated with models of corporate governance that rest on the logic of shareholder primary. The second case study offers an example of a new governance type corporation, but illustrates that new governance faces thorny internal structural challenges, given economic incentives and power imbalance. The third example illustrates that even without these normative and structural problems, new governance would face issues arising out of current strategies employed by corporate decision makers to hedge their own personal risk through equity swaps and other derivatives products, which in turn create new incentives for shirking their responsibilities.     

英国公司中非执行董事的职能

NED的职能一个时期处于逐渐演化之中,起初只是一个荣誉职位,后来发展为参与公司管理.非执行董事被认为具有很好的独立判断能力以及监督作用,有助于公司治理的改善.NED的作用主要有:改进公司治理结构、对公司中某些特定利益的保护以及抑制董事滥用权力.NED职能发挥的局限性在于公司管理人员控制着提供给NED的信息的质量、时间及数量、投入到公司的精力与时间、任命程序、与执行董事相同的利益背景以及激励机制的缺乏.英国通过广泛咨询与公开最佳行为守则改善公司治理,其改革过程也是逐步重视NED过程.     

美国“一股一权”制度的兴衰及其启示

股东控制是美国公司法的基础,而"一股一权"则是该基础的核心。纽约证券交易所在20世纪初迫于政治压力,在上市公司标准中确立了一股一权原则。但在1980年代,纽约证券交易所因美国证券交易所和纳斯达克交易所的竞争压力,放弃了这一上市标准,引起了美国学者对该原则的广泛争议。一股一权原则的合理性尽管经过了学者的多次论证,但大部分国家公司法并没有将这一原则贯彻到底。实证研究表明,股权结构与公司业绩并不存在确定的关系。允许公司按实际情况设计股权结构,可能更有利于公司长远发展,但其前提是健全公司治理制度和投资者保护制度。     

公司制度趋同理论检视下的中国公司治理评析

公司治理全球趋同理论是国际公司法学界在上世纪90年代发起的阶段性议题。趋同论与多元论的广泛交锋、股东中心主义模式与利益相关人模式的优劣权衡、竞争压力假说与路径依赖假说的鲜明对比、法律移植假说与境外上市推动假说的切磋琢磨等多处论战令人印象深刻,也广泛检视了现代公司治理领域的多项命题。该理论也是我国公司法近十年来立法演进与理念变革最重要的域外理论背景之一,为2005公司法修订、独立董事制度引入、股权分置改革、并购重组创新、境外上市、公司社会责任理念深化等公司治理标志性探索直接或间接贡献了理论资源。趋同论与本土论相互制约和共同影响下的近十年中国公司治理总体呈现出一定的英美化转向,与此同时,它也将长期接受来自诸如家族文化与官僚文化、习惯性漠视少数股东利益以及股权结构过度集中等与英美经验暂时难以化约的中国本土现实的挑战。跳出趋同或者多元的概念层面的争论,尊重公司治理规则的国际共识,拓展和优化对先进经验的学习路径,专注于本土问题的解决,也许是当下应当持有的态度。     

THE HARMONIZATION PRINCIPLE IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE REFORM IN CHINA

The agency theory has laid a foundation of knowledge for the review and design of corporate governance in large public corporations, but they are never exclusively symbiotic. Another insight to observe corporate governance is the adaptive efficiency demonstrated by the level of development of venture capital. Therefore, any proposal for corporate governance reform in large public corporations must be based on perspectives of both the agency theory and the adaptive efficiency theory. Otherwise, it is likely that improvements to one value (i.e. improvements by means of agency) will be at the expense of the other (i.e. improvements by means of adaptive efficiency). This theory is termed as the “harmonization principle.” Taking the Chinese State-Controlled Listed Companies (SCLCs) for example, the harmonization principle is applied to testing the reform measures for its corporate governance. With this demonstration, it intends to show the normative implication of the harmonization principle in the overhaul of corporate governance of large public corporations worldwide.     

欧盟最新公司治理改革论要

为优化和完善公司治理以提高企业的国际竞争力,欧盟委员会逐步推出了一系列旨在对公司法及公司治理结构进行现代化变革的行动计划、公司法指令以及相关建议案,通过对公司治理结构的改革,确立企业公开义务,改良股东权利,推进公司组织机构的现代化变革,最终形成灵活、高效的公司治理结构。     

试论"超越法律"的企业社会责任

The corporate social responsibility “beyond law” is the responsibility of enterprises beyond the mandatory obligations by force of law but in line with social values and expectations. Indeed, the legal norms on such kind of responsibility are “soft law”, which mainly incorporate social values and expectations in corporate business behaviors and governance structure, so as to realize corporate “self-regulation”. By protecting the substantive and procedural rights of stakeholders and improving their negotiation power, the “soft law” aims at realizing the spontaneous confrontation and balance of the market, and the corporate reputation mechanism and the functions of NGOs adds much to the performance of corporate social responsibility. He Zhaodan, Economics Doctor of Sun Yat-Sen University, mostly focuses on Law and Economics. She has published six research articles in the academic journals of China.