ABSTRACT
In recent years, many scholars have claimed that globalization is leading to increasing convergence in the nature of corporate governance systems across the globe. In a number of cases, they have argued that these systems are converging on the Anglo-American or ‘outsider’ model of corporate governance, the defining features of which are a high reliance on equity finance; dispersed ownership; strong legal protection of shareholders, including minority shareholders; strong bankruptcy regulations and courts; little role for creditors, employees and other stakeholders in company management; strong requirements for disclosure; and considerable freedom to merge or acquire. Hansmann and Kraakman (2000) have even gone so far as to argue that a global consensus has now emerged ‘that corporate managers should act exclusively in the economic interests of shareholders’ and that, as a result, all jurisdictions will inevitably move towards the outsider model of corporate governance. Borrowing Fukuyama’s (1992) notion of the ‘end of history’, they suggest that we have reached the ‘end of history for corporate law’.
