Law Commons^™

Convergence And Its Critics: What Are The Preconditions To The Separation Of Ownership And Control?, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Recent commentary has argued that deep and liquid securities markets and a dispersed shareholder base are unlikely to develop in civil law countries and transitional economies for a variety of reasons, including (1) the absence of adequate legal protections for minority shareholder, (2) the inability of dispersed shareholders to hold control or pay an equivalent control premium to that which a prospective controlling shareholder will pay and (3) the political vulnerability of dispersed shareholder ownership in left-leaning "social democracies." Nonetheless, this article finds that significant movement in the direction of dispersed ownership has occurred and is accelerating across Europe. To …