In recent years, the longstanding debate between shareholder-oriented and stakeholder-oriented models of corporate governance for large listed, or "public" corporations, has experienced a resurgence. Simultaneously, a wave of new regulations has reshaped the legal landscape, compelling businesses to integrate public objectives - such as environmental protection or the social interests of specific stakeholder groups - into their decision-making processes, which were traditionally driven solely by profitability considerations. Against this background, the book brings together economic, comparative, historical, and doctrinal perspectives of scholars from US and European legal academia.
The ongoing discourse regarding the fundamental role of public corporations in economies and society is vivid and rather different, across Europe, and the US. Filling a gap in comparative literature on these themes, this volume further explores commonalities across these varying legal landscapes, while remaining cognizant of distinct, cultural, legal, and economic contexts. Most strikingly, the contributions here point to the European emphasis on stakeholder-oriented regulation, in contrast to the US-American focus on shareholder value.
Providing a comprehensive analysis of recent legal developments in this space, this volume serves as an essential theoretical guide to debates around corporate purpose, CSR, and ESG today.
Jens-Hinrich Binder, Klaus Hopt, Thilo Kuntz
Jens-Hinrich Binder has been Professor of Private Law, Corporate, Banking and Securities Law at Eberhard-Karls-University Tuebingen since 2013. He is also Visiting Professor at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, was a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, and is a member of the Academic Board of the European Banking Institute. He has written extensively in the areas of corporate and financial law, and has advised numerous German and European institutions in these fields. He is co-editor and serves on the editorial board of two leading German banking law journals.
Thilo Kuntz is Professor (chair) in Private law, Commercial and Corporate law, and Managing Director of the Institute of Corporate Law at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany. He has held visiting positions at Notre Dame Law School and UCLA School of Law. His research focuses on fiduciary law, corporate law, and legal theory. Kuntz has edited and co-edited several books on Transnational Fiduciary Law, ESG, and, with OUP, Methodology in Private Law Theory (2024), and has written extensively in the areas of corporate law and governance and in capital markets regulation, in German and in English.
Klaus J. Hopt is Professor and Director (emeritus) at the Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg; Dr.h.c.mult. (Brussels, Louvain, Paris, Athens, Tiflis), National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He has held visiting professorships at University of Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, NYU, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Kyodai, Todai. He has written extensively in the areas of corporate law and governance and was advisor to the European Commission, international banks and the German legislators and Federal Constitutional Court.
