Successfully completed research project in cooperation with Zayed University

We are glad to report about a successfully completed joint research project between Virtus Global Center for Corporate Governance and Zayed University. The team of authors consists of Prof. Alex Kostyuk and Prof. Khurram Raja. The title of the paper is “Perspectives and obstacles of the shareholder activism implementation: a comparative analysis of civil and common law systems”.

The paper outlines shareholder activism development in common law and civil law countries and identifies features of these legal systems that create preconditions and obstacles for shareholder activism. The findings show that tendencies of shareholder activism depend on the type of the legal system, but also vary within the countries that share the same legal system. Thus, authors conclude that the type of legal system is not the chief determinant of shareholder activism. A comparative analysis of shareholder activism in Germany and Ukraine (civil law countries) and the USA and the UK (common law countries) showed that the system of domestic corporate regulation, development of the stock market, companies’ capitalization and corporate governance influence the development of shareholder activism in equal measure.