Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Hostile Bids Regime in Europe, 2004-2023
New post on the Oxford Business Law Blog by Luca Enriques (Professor of Corporate Law, University of Oxford, and Fellow Member of ECGI) and Matteo Gatti (Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School and Research Member of ECGI).
The blog post presents the findings of the authors' recent paper 'Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Hostile Bids Regime in Europe, 2004-2023'. While the European Union (EU) Takeover Directive, a framework statute adopted in 2004 to regulate corporate control transactions and takeover bids targeting EU listed issuers, was expected to facilitate takeovers as drivers of value creations, in the two decades since its adoption the European takeover environment shifted away from its original pro-market stance. In their paper and in the blog post, Professors Enriques and Gatti investigate the economic, political, legal, and governance developments that explain this deviation from the initial objectives, which created a market and legal landscape less conductive to takeover activity in the EU.