Origins of Shareholder Advocacy

by Koppell, Jonathan GS

• ISBN13: 9780230107328
• ISBN10: 023010732X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Executives lining their own pockets, corporate directors profiting from insider dealing, cozy arrangements between business and government being exploited to eliminate competition, and shareholders filing lawsuits in protest accused of masterminding a short-selling scheme all sound like another sordid chapter in the financial crises that has gripped the world for the last year and a half but it is, in fact, a 400 year-old story demonstrating that problems of corporate malfeasance are as old as the corporation itself. This volume deals with issues of widespread interest to corporate governance scholars, practitioners and policymakers, including: the origins of investor rights in different markets (with attention to the causes and consequences of significant episodes in the history of shareholder activism), the political, legal and economic conditions that determine levels of shareholder participation, and the implications of variation in investor rights, including the connection between protection of investors and the development of capital markets. It's historical and global approach is unique in the study of shareholder participation. The articles address governance from the medieval to early industrial eras and consider markets as varied as the Netherlands, Venice, the United States and China.

Author Biography

Jonathan GS Koppell is Director of the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University where he also holds the Lattie and Elva Coor Presidential Chair. He is the author of World Rule and The Politics of Quasi-Government.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
List of Contributors	p. xiii
Shareholder Advocacy and the Development of the Corporation: The Timeless Dilemmas of an Age-old Solution	p. 1
The Dutch East India Company and the Shareholder as Aggrieved Party
An Admiralty for Asia: Business Organization and the Evolution of Corporate Governance in the Dutch Republic, 1590-1640	p. 29
Shareholder Activists Avant la Lettre: The ôComplaining Participantsö in die Dutch East India Company, 1622-1625	p. 61
The Great Expropriation: Interpreting the Innovation of ôPermanent Capitalö at the Dutch East India Company	p. 89
Overcoming the Agency Challenge of Early Global Trade
Litigation Plus Regulation: The Protection of Investor Rights in Late-Medieval Venice	p. 101
Shareholder Activism in the Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624	p. 123
Shareholders' Rights in the Early Italian Companies: Agency Problems and Legal Strategies	p. 145
Compagnie des Indes: Governance and Bailout	p. 169
The Rise and Fall of the Rishengchang Bank Model: Limiting Shareholder Influence to Attract Capital	p. 187
Shareholder Rights and the Growth of Industrial Economies
A Shareholder Lawsuit in Fourteenth-Century Toulouse	p. 215
Corporate Governance and Stockholder/Stakeholder Activism in the United States, 1790-1860: New Data and Perspectives	p. 231
Origins of ôOffensiveö Shareholder Activism in the United States	p. 253
Contemporary Issues in Shareholder Advocacy	p. 277
Index	p. 287
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