ABSTRACT
Due to the belief that corporate law can influence economic conditions and the broad acceptance of shareholder value maximisation as the leading corporate law paradigm, this chapter explores this paradigm and the theoretical and empirical arguments for its use as a guiding principle of corporate laws. It shows the nature and provenance of shareholder primacy, arguing that its use is not mandated by positive law either in the UK or in the US as representative of the legal family of origin of shareholder primacy. The chapter deals with the analysis of the presence of the shareholder primacy paradigm in the civil law legal family, analysing European Union corporate law in its historical and conceptual perspective. It concludes that there is a need for sustainable companies, which has not been satisfied by the use of shareholder primacy but calls for novel developments and integration of other interests in corporate law, not exclusively limited to the short-term shareholder financial interests.
