Abstract
The UK governance system privileges shareholder rights as residual claimants on the profits of the corporation. But law constrains these rights to produce what has been called an “enlightened shareholder” regime for corporate control. Yet it is the decline of owners’ rights in the face of a diffuse shareholder base precedes any active attempt by the UK to encourage an active market in equity claims. Indeed the current limited liability [corporate form] only emerged quite late in our history, after gaining a somewhat disreputable reputation in the industrial revolution. Limited liability implies that the rights of a corporation must always be more than the sum of its individual shareholders’ rights. So we might ask who is to be the beneficiary of these additional rights?
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Armour, J., S. Deakin and S. Konzelmann. 2003. Shareholder Primacy and the Trajectory of UK Corporate Governance. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 41, 531–555.
Becht, Marco, and Colin Mayer. 2001. The Control of Corporate Europe. European Centre of Corporate Governance. Edited by Frabrizio Barca Oxford. England: Oxford University Press.
Calomiris, Charles, and Stephen Haber. 2014. Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of the Banking Crisis and Scarse Credit. The Princeton Economic History of the Western World. Edited by Joel Mokyr. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Chandler, Alfred. 1993. The Visible Hand. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press.
Coffee, J. 2005. A Theory of Corporate Scandals: Why the USA and Europe Differ? Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 21, 198–211.
Franks, Julin, Colin Mayer and Stefano Rossi. 2013. “Spending Less Time with the Family: The Decline of Family Ownership in the United Kingdom.” In A History of Corporate Governance around the World: Family Business Groups to Professional Managers, edited by Randall Morck. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Glaeser, E. and A. Shleifer. 2002. “Legal Origins.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117, 1193–1229
Goergen, M. 2012. International Corporate Governance, London, Pearson.
Hall, Peter, and David Soskice. 2001. Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Fooundations of Comparative Advantage., Oxford England: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, S. and J. Kwak. 2010. 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, New York, USA, Pantheon Books Random House.
Keay, Andrew. 2008. “Ascertaining the Corporate Objective: An Entity Maximisation and Sustainability Model.” The Modern Law Review 71(5): 663–698.
La Porta, Rafeal, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes and Andrei Shleifer. 1998. “Law and Finance:” Journal of Political Economy 106(6) : 1113–1155.
Mayer, Colin. 2013. Firm Commitment: Why the Corporation Is Failing Us and How We Can Restore Trust in It?, Oxford England: Oxford University Press.
Morck, Randall, and Bernard Yeung. 2009. “Never Waste a Good Financial Crisis: A Historical Perspective on Comparative Corporate Governance.” Annual Review of Financial Economics 1: 145–79.
Olson, Mancur. 1982. The Rise and Decline of Nations, Economic Growth, Stagflation and and Social Rigidities. Yale, NJ: Yale University Press.
Romano, Roberta. 1996. “Corporate Law and Corporate Governance.” Industrial and Corporate Change 5(2): 277–340.
Simon, Herbert. 1990. “Invariants of Human Behaviour.” Annual Review of Psychology 41(1): 1–19.
Solomon, Jill. 2013. Corporate Governance and Accountability. Vol. 4. Chichester, England: John Wiley.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 William Forbes and Lynn Hodgkinson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Forbes, W., Hodgkinson, L. (2015). Historical Context and Codification of Corporate Governance. In: Corporate Governance in the United Kingdom: Past, Present and Future. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137451743_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137451743_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49731-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-45174-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)