The post East Asia & Pacific (Part II): Selected Examples of East Asia & Pacific Jurisdictions Providing for Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) – Specific Insolvency Procedures: Australia, Myanmar & the Lao PDR appeared first on Institute of Asian-Pacific Business Law.

His informal presentation covers an array of key issues currently happening in the Australian and New Zealand region of the world.

The post Going to Law School and  Doing Business “Down Under”:  Australia and New Zealand appeared first on Institute of Asian-Pacific Business Law.

Economic and finance theories – for example, the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), financial economics and behavioural finance – enrich our understanding of securities regulation and assist in regulatory design. This lecture, however, argues that the theories are largely irrelevant to the long-standing core aims of securities regulation – the prevention of fraud and investor protection via disclosure of material information. So, for example, behavioural finance tells us that irrational investors may make bad investment decisions for a variety of reasons. This insight tells us nothing lawyers do not know already or intuitively. The thesis of this lecture is that the United Kingdom – and by extension the former British enclaves in the Southern hemisphere such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand which all adopted United Kingdom law – had developed a powerful and “classic legal genealogy” or rationale for securities regulation long before EMH – or indeed, any other finance theory – became main-stream. It is this “reclaimed” genealogy that should inform governmental regulation of securities markets in those countries.

The post Securities Regulation, Efficient Markets, and Behavioral Finance appeared first on Institute of Asian-Pacific Business Law.

The balance of power between shareholders and the board of directors is a contentious issue in current corporate law debate. It also lay at the heart of a controversy concerning the re-incorporation of News Corporation (News Corp) in Delaware. News Corp has recently been the subject of intense media attention due to its successful bid to acquire Dow Jones & Company. Nonetheless, News Corp’s move to the US, which paved the way for this victory, was neither smooth nor a fait accompli. Rather, the original 2004 re-incorporation proposal prompted a revolt by a number of institutional investors, on the basis that a move to Delaware would strengthen managerial power vis-a-vis shareholder power. The institutional investors were particularly concerned about the effect of the re-incorporation on shareholder participatory rights, and the ability of the board of directors to adopt anti-takeover mechanisms, such as poison pills, which are not permissible under Australian law. It was this latter concern, which ultimately led a group of institutional investors to commence legal proceedings in the Delaware courts in UniSuper Ltd v News Corporation (2005 WL 3529317 (Del Ch)).

The post The Shareholder Empowerment Debate: Lessons from News Corp’s Exodus to Delaware appeared first on Institute of Asian-Pacific Business Law.

Institutional sponsorship support provided by:
Case, Lombardi & Pettit, Honolulu

University of Hawai‘i Center for
International Business Education and Research (CIBER)
Wagner Choi & Evers, Honolulu

Schulze Haynes Loevenguth & Co., Irvine, CA

Individual sponsorship support provided by:
Tasuku Matsuo, Partner, Matsuo & Kosugi, Tokyo

Cooperating Institution:
Asian Institute of International Financial Law, University of Hong Kong

The post Asian-Pacific Corporate Insolvency Law: Cross-Border and Comparative Perspectives Symposium appeared first on Institute of Asian-Pacific Business Law.