Australia Inside/Out: The Corporate Governance System of the Australian Listed Market
Melbourne Univeristy Law Review, Vol. 28, No. 3, December 2004
The University of Manchester Legal Research Paper Series No. Forthcoming
29 Pages Posted: 20 May 2011 Last revised: 5 Jul 2022
Date Written: 2004
Abstract
This article concerns the classification of the corporate governance system of Australia’s listed market. Claims are often made that it is an outsider system of ownership and control, similar to that of the UK and the US. Through an examination of share ownership patterns, institutional investor activism, private rent extraction, the market for corporate control and blocks to information flow, this article argues that the corporate governance system of Australia’s listed market in fact has many of the characteristics associated with insider systems. The misclassification of the corporate governance system of Australia’s listed market has significant impacts for the general classification of insider and outsider systems, as it may be an example of an insider system converging to an outsider system. The misclassification also has significant impacts for the Australian reform agenda, as reforms based on the assumption that the Australian listed market has an outsider system of corporate governance may be inappropriate and damaging.
Keywords: corporate governance, law reform, listed companies, Australia, outsider system, insider system, share ownership patterns, shareholders, institutional investor activism, private rent extraction, market for corporate control, information flow
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