Dr Carsten Gerner Beuerle NAB5.08

This course is available on the Executive LLM. This course is not available as an outside option.

Available to Executive LLM students only. This course will be offered on the Executive LLM during the four year degree period. The Department of Law will not offer all Executive LLM courses every year, although some of the more popular courses may be offered in each year, or more than once each year. Please note that whilst it is the Department of Law's intention to offer all Executive LLM courses, its ability to do so will depend on the availability of the staff member in question. For more information please refer to the Department of Law website.

This course will focus on the role of boards of directors in large public companies and groups of companies. It will deal with the legal regulation of agency problems arising between the board and shareholders as a class; between the board/majority shareholders and minority shareholders; and between the board and other stakeholder groups, notably creditors and employees. Although the main focus will be on board and shareholder relationships, the aim of the course is to develop and apply a framework of analysis which illuminates relations between the board and all stakeholder groups. The course will be taught largely on a comparative basis, focusing on English, US, German and French law.

24-26 hours of contact time.

Students will have the option of producing a formative exam question of 2000 words to be delivered one month from the end of the module’s teaching session by email.

Reading will be prescribed for each seminar. Preliminary reading can be found in P. Davies, Introduction to Company Law (OUP, 2nd edition 2010), chapters 5-9 ; R. Kraakman et al, The Anatomy of Corporate Law (2nd edition 2009); D. Kershaw, Company Law in Context: Text and Materials (OUP, 2nd edition 2012), chapters 5 and 6.

Either a take-home examination or 8,000 word assessed essay (100%).