12
Jul
[The following summary is the abstract from Universal Exceptionalism in International Law by Anu Bradford (an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School) & Eric A. Posner (the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School).] A trope of international law scholarship is that the United States is an “exceptionalist” nation, one...
In each of the three largest economies with dispersed ownership of public companies—the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan—hostile takeovers emerged under a common set of circumstances. Yet the national regulatory responses to these new market developments diverged substantially. In the United States, the Delaware judiciary became the principal source and enforcer of rules on hostile takeovers. These rules give substantial discretion to target company boards in responding to unsolicited bids. In the United Kingdom, by contrast, a private body consisting of market professionals was formed to adopt and enforce the rules on hostile bids and defenses. In contrast to those of the United States, the U.K. rules give the shareholders primary decisionmaking authority in responding to hostile takeover attempts. The hostile takeover regime in Japan, which developed recently and is still evolving, combines substantive rules with elements drawn from both the United States (Delaware) and the United Kingdom, while adding distinctive elements, including an independent enforcement role for Japan’s stock exchange. This Article provides an analytical framework for business law development to explain the diversity in hostile takeover regimes in these three countries.