Law and Economics of Corporate Transactions

This course, which runs during the Hilary and Trinity terms, gives students a toolkit for structuring common corporate transactions. It acts as the fulcrum for the programme as a whole. We begin with sessions on the economic theory of contracting: the nature of the agency, hold-up costs, and other strategic behaviour to be expected in a contracting relationship. We then move on to consider six practical applications to well-known corporate transactions. In each case, an overview of the relevant legal background is introduced in class, and students are then given document packs based on real transactions to work on in a group before presenting their work to the class and academics from the disciplines of law, finance and economics. Practitioners from the leading law firms who completed the transactions under review will then talk to students about the case studies, giving their views and explaining what happened in the real scenario.