Full Description
Shareholder inspection rights form an important tool for shareholder protection. They offer shareholders seeking information private access to specific books and records of the company that are otherwise not publicly available. While there has been a discourse on the topic in some jurisdictions such as Delaware (USA), it has not received scholarly treatment at an international level. This Research Handbook seeks to alter that, and signifies the first endeavor to engage in a comprehensive and comparative analysis of shareholder inspection rights across 19 different jurisdictions representing five continents.
Themes emerging from the study include the historical evolution of inspection rights, the statutory design of the inspection regime, how inspection rights interact with disclosure norms under securities regulation, and the manner in which inspection rights are actually utilized by shareholders. While there is some commonality among jurisdictions, the larger story is one of divergence, which is understandable since local needs tend to drive the design and operation of the regime.
The Research Handbook on Shareholder Inspection Rights is invaluable to academics, scholars, and students working in the area of corporate law and governance, legal practitioners working in corporate law and, in particular, shareholder litigation and regulators and government bodies overseeing the corporate sector, including corporate and securities regulators.
Contents
Contents:
1 Introduction to the Research Handbook on Shareholder Inspection Rights 1
Randall S. Thomas, Paolo Giudici and Umakanth Varottil
PART I THE UNITED KINGDOM
2 United Kingdom historical viewpoint 20
Jonathan Hardman
3 Shareholder Inspection Rights in the UK: hotchpotch provision and
information deficits 40
Brenda Hannigan
PART II CONTINENTAL EUROPE
4 Shareholder inspection rights in Belgium: unpopular or unnecessary? 70
Hans De Wulf
5 Shareholders' inspection and investigation rights in France 100
Pierre-Henri Conac
6 Information rights of shareholders in German company law 121
Christoph Teichmann
7 Inspection rights in Italy 140
Paolo Giudici
8 Inspection rights in Spain 150
María Gutiérrez Urtiaga and Maribel Sáez Lacave
9 Shareholder inspection rights in Sweden and the Nordic Countries 171
Jan Andersson
10 Right of information and right of inspection in the Netherlands 186
Christoph Van der Elst
PART III THE AMERICAS
11 The paradox of Delaware's "Tools at Hand" Doctrine: an empirical
investigation 205
James D. Cox, Kenneth J. Martin, and Randall S. Thomas
12 Addendum: recent developments in the "tools at hand" doctrine 249
James D. Cox and Randall S. Thomas
13 Alternative entity inspection rights 258
Peter Molk
14 Shareholder investigation rights in Canada: a balancing of competing interests 272
Poonam Puri
15 Shareholders' inspection rights in Colombia 289
Francisco Reyes Villamizar
16 Inspection rights and the Brazilian Law of Corporations 307
Marcelo Godke Veiga and Marcelo Vieira von Adamek
PART IV ASIA AND AUSTRALIA
17 Shareholder inspection rights in Australia: then and now 323
Tim Bowley and Jennifer G. Hill
18 Shareholder inspection rights in China: law and practice 343
Robin Hui Huang
19 Over-disclosure in Hong Kong? The role of shareholder inspection
rights in a competitive IFC 361
David C. Donald
20 Shareholder inspection rights in India: restricted scope and diminished effect 377
Umakanth Varottil and Neha Joshi
21 Shareholder inspection rights in Japan: a segmented multiple-track approach 396
Gen Goto
22 Shareholder inspection rights in Korea: law and practice from
a comparative perspective 412
Kon Sik Kim
23 Limited shareholder inspection rights in Singapore: worrying legal gap
or unnecessary for rankings? 430
Dan W. Puchniak and Samantha S. Tang
Index
