SCGI

Should the EU focus on harmonising corporate bond markets, rather than further harmonising equity markets? This question is addressed in an Oxford Business Law Blog post by the European Company Law Expert Group, where SCGI-directors Rolf Skog and Erik Lidman are members.

The conclusion: “Corporate bond markets are not as different from equity markets as is sometimes claimed. On the contrary, many of the fundamental economic issues that company law and equity market regulation aim to address also occur in these debt markets. While these issues have been extensively addressed in EU company law, corporate bond markets have been overlooked in the EU’s capital market harmonisation project. This is unfortunate, given that the borderless nature of the corporate bond markets makes them difficult to regulate nationally due to the risk of regulatory arbitrage and a race to the bottom.”

The blog post can be read here.