Does business just exist to maximise shareholder profit? The belief it does has had disastrous consequences for our economies, environment, politics, and societies, argues Colin Mayer. In an urgent call for reform, he sets out an agenda to remake the corporation into a powerful force for promoting economic and social wellbeing in its fullest sense.
The last decade has witnessed the introduction of an elaborate system of regulation in the UK. Whole segments of British industry are now operating under the supervision of regulatory bodies similar to the government departments they were designed to replace. Regulation has been an inevitable part of the structural changes in the 1980s, notably the privatization program and changes in the financial services industries. This book assesses these developments across a number of sectors (utilities, telecommunications, financial services, health, and higher education) and offers a range of perspectives for understanding the various objectives, mechanisms, and institutions involved. The book offers important insights into the way in which the structure of privatized industries interact with the form of regulation.
The debate over corporate governance, or how companies are controlled, has flourished vigorously for several years in the U.S. and has now spread to the U.K. This book collects papers by leading academics, bankers, and consultants which discuss major issues in corporate governance in the U.K., Germany, and Japan. It examines the role of shareholders, company boards, and managers under a market-based system as exists in the U.K. and the U.S. in comparison with the insider system found in Japan and, to a lesser extent, Germany. The issue of the effectiveness of the British system and how it might be made more efficient through increasing the accountability of company boards to shareholders, both directly and via the capital market, is extensively discussed.