Private Contracting, Law and Finance

Graeme Acheson, Gareth Campbell and John Turner ()

No 2019/05, QBS Working Paper Series from Queen's University Belfast, Queen's Business School

Abstract: In the late nineteenth century Britain had almost no mandatory shareholder protections, but had very developed financial markets. We argue that private contracting between shareholders and corporations meant that the absence of statutory protections was immaterial. Using circa 500 articles of association from before 1900, we code the protections offered to shareholders in these private contracts. We find that firms voluntarily offered shareholders many of the protections which were subsequently included in statutory corporate law. We also find that companies offering better protection to shareholders had less concentrated ownership.

Keywords: Law and finance; ADRI; shareholder protection; corporate ownership; common law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G32 G34 G38 K22 N23 N43 N83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Journal Article: Private Contracting, Law and Finance (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:qmsrps:201905

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3342312

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