"Foreword" [2019] ELECD 276; in Birkmose, S. Hanne; Sergakis, Konstantinos (eds), "Enforcing Shareholders’ Duties" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) xii

Book Title: Enforcing Shareholders’ Duties

Editor(s): Birkmose, S. Hanne; Sergakis, Konstantinos

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781788114868

Section Title: Foreword

Number of pages: 3

Extract:

Foreword In recent years, extensive attention has been paid to the role of shareholders in corporate governance. A lively discourse has developed among regulators, academics and the financial community on the role of shareholders in ensuring sustainable, long-term, corporate welfare and, more generally, the stability of the financial markets. In this context, shareholders' duties are viewed, albeit not without discord, as a driver for constructive capitalism. This volume, edited by Hanne S. Birkmose and Konstantinos Sergakis, is an important addition to this debate. It explores enforcement mechanisms of shareholder duties and is divided into four parts looking respectively at the contours and sources of shareholder duties, their enforcement, and barriers thereto. As stated by its editors, the objective of the volume is to provide an overview of the framework for the enforcement of shareholders' duties and reflect on their efficiency, adaptability to market developments, and suitability to meet the challenges of contemporary corporate and capital markets. The contributors discuss various forms of legal and social enforcement of shareholders' duties. Whilst traditionally corporate law has relied on private enforcement, the growth of capital market regulation has introduced a host of public enforcement mechanisms. The bias in favour of public enforcement has been strengthened by the development of supranational regulatory fora, primarily the EU, which, for reasons relating to their competence, remit and nature, are better placed to introduce public rather than private law disciplines. Still, the boundaries between private and public forms of enforcement are more porous than they might ...