Updates and Developments in Regulatory Competition

Having not blogged in a few weeks I thought I should post something.

Teaching has started down at Hertfordshire and as expected every minute is being filled with meetings and class preparation. I am currently teaching on the LL.B in Company, Commercial and International Commercial alongside the LL.M in Company. For Company Law I have been made module organiser, albeit after the module guide went out to students so including areas such as regulatory competition are very much on an ad hoc basis at the moment.

In regards to regulatory competition a new case has emerged from the ECJ (Vale Costruzioni) over the last couple of months that effectively allowed a transfer of seat without restrictions using national transformation laws as a cross-border conversion. See here for overview before the case was decided. The decision can be seen here. Although I do not know too much of the exact details it seems the court has allowed an Italian company to use the Hungarian Transformation Act to transform itself in to a Hungarian company. It is quite a surprise that the ECJ reached this conclusion despite my own recent observations that the ECJ would be unlikely to depart easily from its stance on restricting movement due to shareholder and creditor protection and its own ability to establish rules on cross border transfers. However, having spoken recently to a professor and judge in Germany recently, Prof Ries, who is visiting currently at the University of Hertfordshire, he informs me that he has not heard of any instances of companies taking advantage of this new ruling. By any means it is certainly an interesting development.

As to the thesis.... The thesis is almost complete! Just an introduction and conclusion to brush up then the full draft has to be dealt with by my supervisors. With any luck it will all be done and dusted by February next year.