On June 13th and 14th 2024, the third German-Spanish-Austrian Symposium on Company and Capital Markets Law took place at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. It was a pleasure to participate and to contribute a presentation on “Dual-Class-Shares in Germany and Europe”. Many thanks to the host of this year’s meeting, Martin Winner.
On May 23 to 24 the third Italian-German Symposion on Company Law was hosted at the University of Padua by Marco Speranzin. This year's general topic was "Shareholders' Rights, Duties and Remedies". I contributed to the event by delivering a presentation on "Remedies in Corporate Law from a Law-and-Economics Perspective". For further information on that specific topic see link.
My article “Dual-class shares on the rise. Some remarks on the (re)introduction of multiple-voting rights in German stock corporation law” has now been published in the new issue of the journal European Company Case Law (ECCL). You will find a short feature of the article here .
A post featuring my paper “Dual-class on the rise - Some remarks on the (re)introduction of multiple-voting rights in German stock corporation law” (soon to be published in ECCL) has been published on the Oxford Business Law Blog. If the short text piques your interest you can find a full version of this paper on SSRN.
On February 07, 2024, I gave a lecture on "Whistleblowing: Incentives and Situational Determinants" at the Freie Universität Berlin. The event took place as part of the joint seminar with LSC-The Laws of Social Cohesion and is a part of the seminar series Preventing Corporate Misconduct of the Empirical Legal Studies Center (FUELS).
Issues of whistleblower protection are also relevant for corporate governance, particularly as a result of the German Whistleblower Protection Act (HinSchG) and the German Corporate Governance Code (DCGK). For this reason, the recently published handbook "Unternehmensführung durch Vorstand und Aufsichtsrat", edited by Peter Hommelhoff, Klaus Hopt and Patrick Leyens, includes my contribution on "Compliance and Whistleblowing in Stock Corporation, Antitrust and Capital Market Law" (in German). More information about the handbook can be found here.
On November 3, I gave a presentation with the title "Multiple-voting Shares on the Rise - Some Remarks on Dual Class Structures from a German Perspective" at the fourth "European Company Case Law (ECCL) Conference on Dual Class Share Structures and EU Companies' Access to Capital" in Lisbon.
In the presentation, I dealt with multiple-voting shares from a German perspective, focusing in particular on the effects of the planned "Law on Financing the Future" and the new Section 135a of the German Stock Corporation Act (GSCA).
The textbook "Economic Methods in Law" by Emanuel V. Towfigh and Niels Petersen(in German) is now available in its third edition and provides access to the legal economic method and its application for German lawyers. Within § 5 I write about contract theory and the economic analysis of contract law
The new edition takes into account current developments and has been optimized for digital use through internal and external linking. The eBook is directly available in open access here.
In the current issue of GmbHR Heft 19 (01 October 2023) I write about questions of limited partner liability in the GmbH & Co. KG.
The liability of the limited partner pursuant to §§ 30, 31 GmbHG analogously for contributions from the assets of the GmbH & Co. KG is beyond dispute. However, difficult questions still await definitive clarification. My contribution therefore attempts to once again clarify the function of this liability. With the help of a glance at Austrian law, it becomes possible to answer questions on limited partner liability that have been the subject of controversial debate up to the present day.
Capital Magazin asked me about the new Whistleblower Protection Act. You can find the resulting interviewe here (in German).