Dr Eva Micheler and Mr Edmund-Philipp Schuster

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time) and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places and we cannot guarantee all students will get a place.

The course examines the private law rules governing how companies raise finance. The issues covered include e.g. capital structures, an introduction to basic finance concepts relevant to understanding the legal rules covered, the rules on raising equity capital, initial legal capital and alternatives, dividends, reduction of capital and share buy-backs, disclosure obligations for listed companies, property rights in shares, the settlement and holding of securities including through distributed ledger (blockchain) technology and insider dealing and market manipulation.

This course will have two hours of teaching content each week in Michaelmas Term, either in the form of a two hour seminar or an online lecture and one hour class. There will be a Reading Week in Week 6 of Michaelmas Term.

Students will have the opportunity to write a formative essay for each of the seminars. All students are strongly encouraged to write at least one essay.

Gower and Davies, Principles of Modern Company Law, 10th edn, 2016; Eilis Ferran and Look Chan Ho, Principles of Corporate Finance Law, 2014, Eva Micheler, Interests in Securities, 2007.

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the summer exam period.

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.