Inom bedömningen av skadeståndsansvar för bolagsledningen och aktieägare enligt 29:1 och 29:3 Aktiebolagslagen, genomförs en oaktsamhetsprövning. Utan oaktsamhet eller uppsåt kan inte ansvar göras gällande. Vad som utgör oaktsamhet saknar direkt definition i lag, utan har bedömts av domstolarna i varje enskilt fall. Då oaktsamhet liksom lagöverträdelser, och åsidosättande av uppdrag, väger tungt vid en ansvarsbedömning, behöver bolagsledningen utöver allmän kunskap om aktuella regler även veta vilken aktsamhet som krävs för att undvika ansvar. I Skatteförfarandelagen 59:12-14 finns liknande ansvarsbestämmelser. Bestämmelserna anger att en företrädare för bolaget kan bli personligt ansvarig för den juridiska personens skatter och avgifter. En ansvarsförutsättning är att det föreligger grov oaktsamhet. Företrädaransvaret inom skatteförfarandelagen, och skadeståndsansvaret utifrån aktiebolagslagen, förutsätter således båda ett oaktsamt handlande i varierande grad. Eftersom två bestämmelser i skiljda regelverk kan medföra ett ingripande ansvar för någon i bolagsledningen, borde en viss kontinuitet fordras i hur oaktsamheten bedöms. Företrädaransvar har enligt praxis visat sig utgå endast genom överträdelsen i sig, d.v.s. de faktiska omständigheterna, i vissa fall har en subjektiv faktor spelat in, och det är insikten. Insikten i bedömningen motsvarar den grova oaktsamheten som förutsätts. Vid skadeståndsansvar bedöms fler faktorer än en insikt för att vanlig oaktsamhet ska föreligga, och utöver oaktsamheten, även andra faktorer för att ansvar sedan ska utgå. Risken för diskrepens inom tillämpningen av dessa ansvarsregler är inget bolagsledningens kan förutspå, och borde därför inte ligga på bolagsledningens axlar. Även om det kan vara svårt att skapa ett fullt ut förenligt system för oaktsamhetsprövning. Borde det kunna förhindras att oförenligheten blir på någons bekostnad. / In assessing the liability of the company management and shareholders of 29:1 and 29:3 in the Swedish Companies Act, a negligent appraisal is required. Without negligence or intent, no one can be held responsible. What constitutes negligence are not directly defined by statute but has been deemed by the courts in each case. When negligence, violations of law, and breaches of mission weighs heavily in a responsible assessment, the senior management needs beyond the general knowledge of current rules also know what prudence required to avoid liability. The tax procedure law 59:12-14 contains similar liability rules. The rules state that a representative of the company may be personally liable for taxes and fees associated with the company. The standard of liability in the Tax procedure law requires gross negligence. The liability regarding taxes and liability on the basis of the Companies Act, therefore both requires negligence is in varying degrees. Since the two provisions in separate regulations may result in an intervening responsibility for any of the senior management, a degree of continuity is needed as to how the negligence is assessed. The liability for taxes has by convention been shown to activate only by the infringement itself, i.e. the facts. In some cases, a subjective factor has played a role, and it is the recognition of the deficient tax payment. This recognition is in the tax-liability assessment equal to the gross negligence required. Liability in accordance with the Swedish Companies Act on the other hand, requires more than recognition to constitute ordinary negligence. In addition to this negligence, other factors are also assessed before actual liability is activated. The risk of discrepancy in the application of liability in two regulations can’t be predicted by the management, and shouldn’t lie on the management's shoulders. While it may be difficult to create a fully compatible system for negligence trial, it should be prevented that the incompatibility is at someone's expense.

In the last four decades, one of the fastest-growing fields of research in economics has been the contractual theory of the firm developed in Coase’s (1937) footsteps. Yet despite what otherwise seems to be a genuine success story the question of the nature of the firm remains an empirical and theoretical challenge, painfully illustrated by the lack of consensus regarding the definition and boundaries of the firm. The argument of this thesis is that many thorny questions that plague the literature, including issues related to ownership, boundaries, and intra-firm authority, are due to the fact that contractual theorists of the firm have generally overlooked a key legal feature of the economic system, without which theories of the firm are like Hamlet without the Prince. An elementary institutional fact about firms and markets is that in order to become a fully operational firm in a modern market economy, an entrepreneur or an association of resource owners need to go through a registration or incorporation procedure by which the legal system creates a separate legal person or legal entity in which ownership rights over assets used in production are vested, in whose name contracts are made, and thanks to which the firm has standing in court. With this assignment of legal personality, the legal system creates the efficiency-enhancing nexus for contracts that literally carries the organizational framework of the firm, and secures its continuity by locking-in the founders’ committed capital, thereby allowing them to pledge assets, raise finance and do business in the firm’s own name. Given the basic principle that only legal persons may own property and have the capacity to contract, and the implication that legally enforceable contracts can only exist between legal persons, it is something of a paradox that the notion of legal personality is absent from the prevailing narrative in the contractual theory of the firm. The thesis examines the reasons behind this state of affairs, and identifies alongside the widespread view among economists that firms can be defined with little or no reference to law, particularly statutory law, the lasting influence of Jensen and Meckling’s (1976) ambiguous dismissal of legal personality as a legal fiction that unavoidably leads to misleading reification. In order to disentangle the issues involved, the thesis puts this argument into historical perspective, and suggests that much can be learned from the corporate personality controversy that in the past has addressed the same questions. As the overview of the history of this debate reveals, the category mistakes that Jensen and Meckling presented as inevitable can be easily avoided once the meaning and functions of legal personality are properly understood. The thesis dispels enduring misunderstandings surrounding the notion of personhood, and proposes a legally-grounded view of the nature and boundaries of the firm that recognizes in law’s provision of legal entity status a fundamental institutional support for the firm while fitting the overall Coasean narrative.

This dissertation consists of three papers that examine how aspects of public policy may impact private sector corporate governance. The first two examine the relationship between personal-tax policy and corporate agency costs. The first paper is a theoretical analysis based on an agency model of managerial behavior. A unique element of this paper is that it assumes a discontinuous compensation function, which reflects the occurrence of performance thresholds associated with the dismissal incentive and many common bonus plans. The analysis results in three main findings. First, the relative magnitude of proportional taxation has an indeterminate effect on managerial performance. Second, an increase in tax progressivity is associated with reduced managerial performance and increased agency costs. Third, the inclusion of performance thresholds and compensation discontinuities can cause tax system changes to have surprisingly large impacts on managerial performance. The second paper is an empirical investigation of the relationship between personal-tax progressivity and corporate operating efficiency. The analysis is based on variations in across-state tax policy and utilizes a sample of US-based firms. Using matched-pair testing and regression analysis, evidence is found that is consistent with the hypothesis that increased personal-tax progressivity negatively impacts managerial performance. Together, the analysis contained in the first two papers suggests a need to further examine the relationship between personal taxation and corporate agency costs, an issue that is largely absent from the research literature. The third paper investigates whether variations in state corporate law affect firm value. Previous research in this area generally treats all states other than Delaware as having homogeneous corporate law. I relax this assumption and analyze a large panel sample of US firms. Evidence is found that Delaware firms are worth more, on average, than non-Delaware firms. However, this effect is not consistent across all non-Delaware jurisdictions. The valuation differences are correlated to differences in statutory law. Specifically, corporate law that provides greater entrenchment of management is associated with reduced firm value. The results indicate that corporate law does affect corporate governance. Furthermore, the findings are inconsistent with the “race to the bottom” theory of corporate law.

This paper argues that the despite the apparent rejection of the shareholder primacy model by the Supreme Court of Canada in Peoples Department Stores Inc. (Trustee of) v. Wise and BCE Inc. v. 1976 Debentureholders, there is a strong tradition of shareholder primacy in Canada that has persisted in jurisprudence and legislative materials. The dislodging of shareholder primacy as the guiding force in directors’ duties is discordant with this tradition and per incuriam. As such, at the moment, the duty of loyalty of directors to the corporation is adrift, lacking substantive guidance from the Supreme Court. This guidance, this paper argues, can be found in the “enlightened shareholder value” model embodied in s. 172 of the United Kingdom’s Companies Act 2006 which holds to shareholder primacy while exhorting directors to adopt an inclusive approach to the interests of non-shareholder stakeholders.

This paper argues that the despite the apparent rejection of the shareholder primacy model by the Supreme Court of Canada in Peoples Department Stores Inc. (Trustee of) v. Wise and BCE Inc. v. 1976 Debentureholders, there is a strong tradition of shareholder primacy in Canada that has persisted in jurisprudence and legislative materials. The dislodging of shareholder primacy as the guiding force in directors’ duties is discordant with this tradition and per incuriam. As such, at the moment, the duty of loyalty of directors to the corporation is adrift, lacking substantive guidance from the Supreme Court. This guidance, this paper argues, can be found in the “enlightened shareholder value” model embodied in s. 172 of the United Kingdom’s Companies Act 2006 which holds to shareholder primacy while exhorting directors to adopt an inclusive approach to the interests of non-shareholder stakeholders.

This dissertation consists of three papers that examine how aspects of public policy may impact private sector corporate governance. The first two examine the relationship between personal-tax policy and corporate agency costs. The first paper is a theoretical analysis based on an agency model of managerial behavior. A unique element of this paper is that it assumes a discontinuous compensation function, which reflects the occurrence of performance thresholds associated with the dismissal incentive and many common bonus plans. The analysis results in three main findings. First, the relative magnitude of proportional taxation has an indeterminate effect on managerial performance. Second, an increase in tax progressivity is associated with reduced managerial performance and increased agency costs. Third, the inclusion of performance thresholds and compensation discontinuities can cause tax system changes to have surprisingly large impacts on managerial performance. The second paper is an empirical investigation of the relationship between personal-tax progressivity and corporate operating efficiency. The analysis is based on variations in across-state tax policy and utilizes a sample of US-based firms. Using matched-pair testing and regression analysis, evidence is found that is consistent with the hypothesis that increased personal-tax progressivity negatively impacts managerial performance. Together, the analysis contained in the first two papers suggests a need to further examine the relationship between personal taxation and corporate agency costs, an issue that is largely absent from the research literature. The third paper investigates whether variations in state corporate law affect firm value. Previous research in this area generally treats all states other than Delaware as having homogeneous corporate law. I relax this assumption and analyze a large panel sample of US firms. Evidence is found that Delaware firms are worth more, on average, than non-Delaware firms. However, this effect is not consistent across all non-Delaware jurisdictions. The valuation differences are correlated to differences in statutory law. Specifically, corporate law that provides greater entrenchment of management is associated with reduced firm value. The results indicate that corporate law does affect corporate governance. Furthermore, the findings are inconsistent with the “race to the bottom” theory of corporate law.

Esta dissertação procura analisar os acordos de acionistas tipificados pelo art. 118 da Lei nº 6.404/76, mais especificamente, os acordos que regulam o exercício do voto e/ou o exercício do poder de controle. O interesse pelo tema é decorrente da falta de consenso da doutrina e da jurisprudência acerca do assunto, o que contribuiu fortemente para a insegurança jurídica no uso do instituto. Além disso, tal falta de consenso foi acentuada com a reforma da lei acionária pela Lei nº 10.303/01. Dessa forma, o presente trabalho busca, a partir da análise da doutrina pátria e da doutrina estrangeira, delimitar corretamente os principais conceitos acerca do acordo de voto. Com este objetivo, o presente trabalho começa com a análise das características históricas das sociedades anônimas, focada na definição de competência e interação entre os órgãos da companhia, resultando na conclusão de que no direito brasileiro, não há uma divisão fixa de competências entre os órgãos e há hierarquia entre tais órgãos, prevalecendo a assembleia geral de acionistas. Nos demais capítulos, o presente trabalho analisa: (a) o conceito de partes, estabelecendo que apenas acionistas podem ser partes em acordo de votos, (b) o objeto, reconhecendo o exercício do direito de voto e o exercício do poder de controle como objetos legítimos, admitindo-se assim a diferenciação entre acordo de comando e acordo de defesa, (c) as delimitações do objeto, demonstrando que interesse social e abuso de poder de controle são dois fortes delineadores do conteúdo dos acordos de voto, e (d) os efeitos dos acordos de voto, especificamente os acordos de defesa e os acordos de comando, vez que podem irradiar efeitos para os órgãos administrativos da companhia. Espera-se que este trabalho possa contribuir com o debate acerca do tema acordo de voto. / This dissertation endeavors an investigation on shareholders agreements set forth by Article 118 of Federal Law N. 6,404/76, more precisely, shareholders agreements that regulates the exercise of voting rights and/or the control over the company. The interest for the subject developed in view of the nonexistence of an agreement on the matter, either by the legal doctrine or the case law. Furthermore, the dissensions were heightened by the modifications Federal Law N. 10,303/01 implemented to Federal Law N. 6,404/76. In this sense, the present study pursues to correctly circumscribe the main concepts regarding voting agreements, through an analysis of Brazilian and foreign legal doctrine. With such purpose, this work starts with an examination of historical characteristics of joint-stock corporations, focusing on the definition of the powers regarding each body of the company, and on the interaction between them, coming to the conclusion that, under Brazilian law, there is no fixed partition of powers between the bodies, but there is hierarchy between them, being the shareholders meeting the prevalent body. Moreover, this dissertation investigates: (a) the concept of parties, concluding that only shareholders can be parties in voting agreements; (b) the object of shareholders agreements, recognizing the exercise of voting rights and the control over the company as lawful objects, acknowledging, therefore, the difference between commanding agreements and defense agreements; (c) the delimitations of the object, demonstrating that social interest and abuse of control over the company are two main aspects that bound the content of voting agreements; and (d) the effects of shareholders agreements, more specifically, the commanding agreements and defense agreements, considering that they may be effective over administrative bodies of the company. This work is expected to contribute with the debate regarding the matter on voting agreements.

El libro busca ampliar y analizar el concepto de jurídico de sociedad unipersonal, así como describir la importancia de permitir su existencia y regulación en el Perú, en forma total y no para un grupo privilegiado. A lo largo de cuatro capítulos, el autor desarrolla la importancia de la unipersonalidad societaria desde la casuística, la doctrina, el derecho positivo y el derecho, en comparación con experiencias de otros países. / The book aims to expand and analyze the legal concept of sole proprietorship and to describe the importance of allowing its existence and regulation in Perú for all citizen and not noly for a privileged group. Throughout the 4 chapters of the publication, the author develops the importance of the sole proprietorship from the casuistry, doctrine, the positive law and the law compared to other countries’s experiences.

No description available.

A tese tem por objeto a análise do instigante tema do abuso de minoria em direito societário, sobre o qual muitos possuem uma noção geral empírica, extraída da sua vivência profissional, mas que, no direito brasileiro, não havia sido objeto de análise sistemática por parte dos juristas pátrios, que ao tema dedicaram não mais do que algumas breves considerações, malgrado a sua inegável importância e a riquíssima experiência acumulada noutros países, em especial na França, Itália e Alemanha. Partindo das constatações inegáveis de que a minoria, ainda quando atue em face de um grupo controlador preestabelecido, exerce um verdadeiro poder e de que, onde há poder, existe sempre a possibilidade de sua degeneração, do seu desvirtuamento, procurou-se apontar quais são os pressupostos caracterizadores do abuso de minoria no direito societário brasileiro, com apoio em subsídios de direito comparado. De fato, tanto a maioria como a minoria podem exercer os seus direitos de maneira abusiva dentro de uma sociedade, de modo que o estudo do tema não pode ser entendido como um golpe à posição dos grupos minoritários, e sim o contrário: só quem conhece os limites dos seus poderes tem condições de exercê-los de forma eficaz, sem temer as reações de seus atos. Elaborado sob tal perspectiva, o estudo encontra-se dividido em cinco partes. A primeira delas, composta por dois capítulos, tem por objetivo caracterizar o abuso de minoria em direito societário analisando, para tanto, os vários institutos empregados pela doutrina nessa tarefa edefinindo os seus elementos constitutivos. Na segunda parte, procura-se apresentar a tipologia do abuso de minoria e a sua casuística, com destaque para as situações mais interessantes ou corriqueiras. A terceira parte, por sua vez, trata do delicado e intrigante problema dos meios de repressão dos abusos de minoria e as possíveis técnicas contratuais e estatutárias de auto-tutela. A quarta parte, a seu turno, traz breves considerações sobre a hipótese, também pouquíssimo explorada na doutrina, do abuso de igualdade, que pode se instalar em sociedades em que o capital votante é igualmente dividido entre dois sócios e que, assim, só consegue operar sob o signo da unanimidade. Por fim, na quinta e última parte são apresentadas as considerações finais, com o apanhado das principais conclusões construídas ao longo da tese. / The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the exciting theme of minority abuse in the corporate law, of which many legal professionals have general empirical knowledge, extracted from their professional experience, but that, in the Brazilian law system, had not been the subject matter of a systematic analysis on the part of Brazilian law experts, that dedicated no more than some brief considerations to the theme, in spite of their undeniable importance and very rich experience accumulated in other countries, especially in France, Italy and Germany. Based on undeniable verifications that the minority, even if acting against a pre-established controlling group, exercises a true power and that, where there is power, there is always a possibility for degeneration and distortion of power, we sought to point out the assumptions characterizing minority abuse in the Brazilian corporate law, supported on inputs from comparative law. Actually, both the majority and the minority may exercise their rights abusively in a society, so that the study of the theme should not be understood as an attack on the position of minority groups, much on the contrary: only those who know the limitations of their powers are in a position to exercise them effectively, without fearing any reactions to their actions. Prepared under such perspective, this study is divided into five parts. The first of them, consisting of two chapters, intends to characterize minority abuse in corporate law analyzing for such, the several institutes employed by the doctrine in that task and defining their constitutive elements. In the second part, the author seeks to present the typology of minority abuse and its casuistry, highlighting situations that are most interesting or ordinary. The third part, in turn, discusses the delicate and intriguing problem of manners to repress minority abuses and possible contractual and statutory self-protection techniques. The fourth part brings brief considerations on the hypothesis, also very little explored in the doctrine, of equality abuse, that may get settled in societies where the voting capital is equally divided among shareholders and therefore, can only operate under the sign of unanimity. Finally, the fifth part presents the final considerations, with a summary of the main conclusions developed throughout the thesis.