Stocks for All: People's Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century

Welcome to our lunch seminar with presentation by Petri Mäntysaari, Professor of commercial law at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki and Vaasa, Finland.

Open for all interested. Zoom link below.

Boy, pig, blue, smile

Photo by Gelpi, Colourbox.com

Abstract

While financial inequality is caused by many things, one of its drivers is regulation. Much of the regulation of capital markets seems to be designed in the interests of financial intermediaries to the detriment of non-financial firms and retail investors. This has increased the allocation of capital from everybody else to financial intermediaries.

To cure the problem, this new monograph tries to create alternatives to financial intermediaries by developing regulatory design principles that could increase the number of publicly-traded companies and retail investors' direct share ownership.

First, a historical and comparative study of past regulatory practices in the areas of company law, securities law and stock exchange law is used to identify regulatory practices that have worked well and are sustainable in the long term, and practices that have turned out to be unsustainable in the long term. This part of the book covers the period from the eighteenth or nineteenth century to approximately 2020.

Second, based on the results of the empirical and comparative study, new design principles are proposed for the regulation of the capital markets of the future.

It turned out in the study that US and continental European company law are fundamentally different. The most fundamental difference between US and continental European company law seems to be the lack of the notion of the firm (das Unternehmen, l'entreprise) in the US. This has made traditional US company law unsustainable. While the interests of the firm have played a major role in continental European company law and increased its sustainability, the interests of the firm have played no role in securities law and stock exchange law. This seems to have contributed both to the lack of companies with publicly-traded shares and to financial inequality.

Link to Zoom

https://uio.zoom.us/j/67280967365?pwd=T0tKanMyVmVDVVFvOHRFVUxNcWdxUT09

 

 

Published May 18, 2022 10:31 AM - Last modified Aug. 28, 2022 10:17 AM