Cheers and Boos for Employee Involvement: Co-Determination as Corporate Governance Conundrum

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Employee involvement in a very general sense is by and large an accepted policy goal in the European Union. Its forms nonetheless vary considerably among Member States and sometimes include boardroom representation. Board composition, performance and incentive structures are core areas of the ongoing corporate governance debate in Europe and most other parts of the world. These two discourses are rather disparate. Recent EC legislation and jurisprudence do not proactively pursue an integrated approach. The following paper maps out overlapping areas of employee participation and corporate structure, explores some theoretical underpinnings for employee involvement from a contract-theory perspective and analyses issues specific to internationally engaged corporate groups. Finally, a transaction-based approach for modernisation of employee involvement is suggested. Preference is given to default rules that do not require employees to be represented at board level yet leave room for agreements to that effect. The plasticity of private law, the resilience of the corporate form and the governance-assisted employment relationship can defy petrification. Transaction-based employee involvement promotes a productive conjunction of corporate governance components consonant with the specific character of the employment relationship. An evolutionary approach to reform requires flexible legislation instead of deference to existing models. However, consensual model building needs proper enabling tools. Academic groundwork in private international law, contract, labour and corporate law is called for.Peer Reviewe

The many facets of “Group Law”

Corporate groups are the normal way to do business. The individual companies forming the group have legal personality; the structure is a product of private law and benefits from private and organizational autonomy. Attempts in corporate law and other fields to cope with group-specific problems remain piecemeal and sometimes even contradictory. Whereas corporate law honours the legal personality of the individual companies, other areas of law treat the group as a unit. Corporate groups as such are neither good nor bad; they serve venerable purposes and provide for organizational options which the stand-alone company cannot offer. Subsidiaries function as pre-determined breaking points for spin-offs and asset deals. The plurality of legal entities allows coordination by contract and by organization. Treating the group as a unit lends itself to unwanted side effects. Legal scholarship should recognize, harmonize, and develop the strategies to finely calibrate laws and standards reflecting group situations.Os grupos de sociedades são a forma normal de fazer negócios. As empresas individuais que constituem o grupo têm personalidade jurídica; a estrutura é um produto do direito privado e beneficia de autonomia privada e organizacional. As tentativas no direito societário e noutros campos para lidar com problemas específicos do grupo permanecem fragmentadas e às vezes até contraditórias. Enquanto o direito societário honra a personalidade jurídica das empresas individuais, outras áreas do direito tratam o grupo como uma unidade. Os grupos de sociedades em si mesmos não são nem bons nem maus; eles servem propósitos respeitáveis e fornecem opções organizacionais que a sociedade individualmente não consegue oferecer. As filiais funcionam como ponto de rutura predeterminado para cisões e negócios de ativos. A pluralidade de entidades legais permite a coordenação por contrato e por organização. Tratar o grupo como uma unidade conduz a efeitos colaterais indesejados. Cabe à doutrina reconhecer, harmonizar e desenvolver estratégias para definir com precisão as leis e os padrões que retratem as situações de grupo

The Public Spirit of the Corporation

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Peer Reviewe

“Corporate Group Law for Europe”: Comments on the Forum Europaeum’s Principles and Proposals for a European Corporate Group Law

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Peer Reviewe

Treuhänderische Übernahme und Verwahrung – international und interdisziplinär betrachtet: Tagung zur NS-Provenienzforschung an der Universität Wien (Wien, 2.–4. Mai 2017)

Notes on a conference about book provenance research held at the University of Vienna in May 2017

Eine internationale Landkarte der Personengesellschaften

Personengesellschaften sind weltweit verbreitet. Bei näherem Hinsehen, hier auf Frankreich Großbritannien und die USA, zeigt sich, dass wesentliche Elemente stark differieren. Es gibt Personengesellschaften ohne rechtliche Verselbständigung; eine Trennung des der Gesellschaft gewidmeten Vermögens vom Privatvermögen der Gesellschafter kann dann aber gleichwohl durch die (sachenrechtlichen) Formen gemeinsamer Zuständigkeit erfolgen (Gesamthand, Gemeinschaft, indivision, joint tenancy). Die Einordnung als „juristische Person“ oder legal entity folgt dem jeweiligen Verständnis dieser Formen. Rechtsfähigkeit und Vertretungsmacht entsprechen sowohl in Frankreich als auch im amerikanischen Recht grundsätzlich dem vertraglichen Unternehmensgegenstand; Anscheinsvollmacht und Vertrauensschutz dienen der Sicherheit des Rechtsverkehrs. Die unbeschränkte und unbeschränkbare Vertretungsmacht ist eine deutsche Besonderheit. Die Registrierung ist teils konstitutiv, teils deklaratorisch, teils zwingend, teils freiwillig. Publizitätsfolgen variieren mit dem jeweiligen Zivil- und Handelsrecht. Der Personenbezug manifestiert sich in einer stärkeren Bindung der Mitgliedschaft als bei juristischen Personen im deutschen Sinne. Die Binnenorganisation zeigt, aus deutscher Sicht, körperschaftliche Züge, etwa beim (Fremd-)Geschäftsführer in Frankreich und dem Mehrheitsprinzip bei der gewöhnlichen Geschäftsführung. Die persönliche Haftung ist durchweg subsidiär, § 128 HGB ist die Ausnahme. Die Vielzahl von Sonderformen einschließlich kapitalmarktgängiger Varianten erklärt sich meist aus dem Steuerrecht. Die Weiterentwicklung des Personengesellschaftsrechts sollte davon ausgehen, welche Elemente für welche Zwecke tauglich sind. Für die formlose, schlichte Vertragsgesellschaft besteht Bedarf, ebenso für den rechtlich verselbständigten Unternehmensträger.Partnerships are a common form of business association. A closer look however, here to France, the UK and the U.S., reveals substantial differences. Partnerships may be considered an aggregate of their members that does not amount to a legal entity. Nevertheless, funds dedicated to the business can be separated from the partners’ patrimony by means of joint tenancy in property law. The concepts of legal entity or legal personality vary considerably. In France as well as in the UK and in the U.S., the powers of a legal entity encompass everything necessary or useful to pursue the (limited) business purpose. Limits in actual authority of persons acting on behalf of the legal entity are subject to agency law including apparent and implied authority. The German concept of mandatory unlimited authority is the exception. Registration constitutes the legal entity, is declaratory, voluntary, or mandatory, as the case may be. Legal consequences as to third party reliance vary with general commercial or civil law. Partnerships are more closely tied to their partners than corporations to their shareholders. The internal organization of the partnership looks more corporate in France, the U.S. and UK than in Germany; examples are majority rule for day-today business decisions and, in France, non-partner officers. Personal liability of partners is usually subordinated; § 128 HGB is a German specialty. The huge variety of partnership forms, including partnerships with listed units, follows tax law incentives. The guiding question for the further development of partnership law is which elements are useful for which purposes. There is demand for a simple, contractual form of partnership as well as for the entity variation as owner of a firm.Peer Reviewe

A CRISPR-Cas9 sex-ratio distortion system for genetic control.

Genetic control aims to reduce the ability of insect pest populations to cause harm via the release of modified insects. One strategy is to bias the reproductive sex ratio towards males so that a population decreases in size or is eliminated altogether due to a lack of females. We have shown previously that sex ratio distortion can be generated synthetically in the main human malaria vector Anopheles gambiae, by selectively destroying the X-chromosome during spermatogenesis, through the activity of a naturally-occurring endonuclease that targets a repetitive rDNA sequence highly-conserved in a wide range of organisms. Here we describe a CRISPR-Cas9 sex distortion system that targets ribosomal sequences restricted to the member species of the Anopheles gambiae complex. Expression of Cas9 during spermatogenesis resulted in RNA-guided shredding of the X-chromosome during male meiosis and produced extreme male bias among progeny in the absence of any significant reduction in fertility. The flexibility of CRISPR-Cas9 combined with the availability of genomic data for a range of insects renders this strategy broadly applicable for the species-specific control of any pest or vector species with an XY sex-determination system by targeting sequences exclusive to the female sex chromosome

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