Professor Ventoruzzo coauthors new casebook on ‘Comparative Corporate Law’

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Comparative Corporate Law, published by West Academic Press this summer and coordinated and coauthored by Penn State Law professor Marco Ventoruzzo, fills the gap between a traditional casebook and a more extensive manual on the subject by providing a comprehensive and compelling analysis of the international business context in which enterprises operate.

In today’s global economy, corporations are not only conducting business internationally but they are consistently looking for competitive advantages and potential risks presented by states’ varying corporate law structures. Comparative Corporate Law helps readers understand the legal strategies followed by legislators, policymakers, and judges to regulate global corporations—and the arguments of attorneys representing these businesses—by identifying the underlying economic or substantive problems behind the law.

Primarily designed as a teaching resource for the growing number of courses taught on comparative corporate law at law schools around the world, the book is innovative in presenting, commenting, and contrasting judicial decisions, statutory materials, and excerpts from scholarly contributions not only from the U.S. and U.K., but from jurisdictions as different as Japan and France, Germany and Italy, Brazil and Israel, and translated in English when necessary.

Beyond the law school classroom, the authors believe the book could be used by students of business, economics, and international affairs. It should also be of interest to legal scholars, practitioners, regulators, and businesspeople, more generally, to acquire or deepen their understanding of international corporate law. In fact, the book has received endorsements not only from academics, but also from practitioners such as corporate law attorney Martin Lipton.

After the forward by comparative business law scholar Klaus Hopt, the book offers a brief overview of methodology and basic comparative law issues. It then discusses regulatory competition and convergence of legal systems; the incorporation process; corporate finance and corporate governance; directors’ liability and derivative suits; shareholders’ agreements; mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers; and insider trading. A final chapter is dedicated to international litigation and arbitration.

More information on Comparative Corporate Law, can be found on the Social Science Research Network, where the book’s forward, table of contents, and methodological notes can be downloaded.

All royalties from the book are being donated to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) of Montgomery, Ala., founded and directed by Brian Stevenson, author of the bestselling book Just Mercy. The EJI is a private, nonprofit organization that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.

Ventoruzzo, the Arthur L. and Sandra S. Piccone Faculty Scholar at Penn State Law, is a comparative business law scholar who has published extensively in the U.S. and Europe in English, French, and Italian. He holds a joint appointment with Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, where he has been director of the Ph.D. program in Corporate and Business Law and vice-director of the Paolo Baffi Research Center on Central Banking and Financial Regulation. He is a research associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute and previously directed the Max Planck Institute for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law in Luxembourg.