LAW6459 Contract Law and Financial Markets

LAW6459 Contract Law and Financial Markets

Number of Credits

2

Teaching Hours

32

Offering School

KoGuan School of Law

Course Teacher

Wei Shen

Course Level

Postgraduate Level

Language of Instruction

English

First Day of Class

Thursday, 23rd February, 2022

Last Day of Class

Thursday, 4th May, 2022

Course Component

Lecture

Mode of Teaching

Synchronous

Meeting Time

Week 2-12: Thursdays, 18:00 p.m.-20:20 p.m.

Course recordings available for students.

Time Zone

Beijing Time(UTC+8)

Course-specific Restrictions (e.g. Prerequisites / Major / Year of Study)

No restrictions.

Course Description

This is an intensive course focusing on a comparative analysis of business systems across the world, particularly those in Hong Kong, the mainland China and the US. We will discuss the basic question: how does law matter to business practice?

 

To answer this question, we need to take into consideration two complementarities. First, the legal system in a given jurisdiction consists of a variety of legal subject areas, including corporate law, securities regulation, labor law, bankruptcy law, and tax law, among others. These areas of law do not operate in isolation but rather in complement to affect the business practices in a country. Second, the law operates in conjunction with economic markets and social norms.

 

With this in mind, I propose the following framework: consider the company as a forum for incentive bargaining among four major participants: management, employees, creditors, and shareholders. How do the complementary effects of various laws, markets and norms affect the incentives of each participant? How has this affected the accepted business practices in a country, and in turn, the broader business system?

 

On each of the following topics, students will be exposed to classical readings in business law theory, as well as more recent scholarship that applies those classical theories to case studies of modern US and Asian firms. Through the readings and participation in class discussions, my hope is that students will learn to think critically about the dynamic interplay of legal systems, economic markets, and social norms and their combined effects on business systems. Certainly, as the course title suggests, one of the key components in this course is shareholder protection and shareholder remedies.

 

Just a reminder, please do not take it for granted that this is a practice or training course. Put the other way, this is a core course on corporate law and corporate governance theories.

Syllabus

English