Choosing the Right Regulatory Regime
Centre Associate
John Armour, Professor of Law and Finance at Oxford University spoke on ‘Regulatory competition and shareholder litigation’ at the Dean’s Seminar on 1 December at the Saïd Business School. Mari Sako, who attended the seminar writes: ‘Is it a good thing or a bad thing to give firms a choice of where to incorporate and litigate? There is a debate as to whether this choice leads to 'a race to the bottom' or 'a race to the top' in the quality of corporate law. The state of Delaware in the US has attracted many firms to incoporate for having a more management friendly law, but the advent of plaintiff lawyers appears to have put off firms as they choose to use courts in other states to settle M & A- and LBO-related suits. Professor Armour used both quantitative and qualitative analyses to shed light on causal linkages leading to this trend.’