Claiming Damages from Members of Management Boards in Germany: Time for a Radical Rethink and Possible Lessons from Down Under?
The Company Lawyer, Vol. 36, No. 11, 2015
20 Pages Posted: 27 Oct 2015 Last revised: 18 Sep 2019
Date Written: 2015
Abstract
The objective of this article is to examine whether existing problems in the German liability law could be overcome by a national regulatory authority similar to the Australian regulator (ASIC), and whether urgent reforms to the German corporate law are needed. Based on the results of these investigations, a reform proposal will be developed for Germany.
The third part of this article will be focus on ways to enforce the duties of management board members in Aktiengesellschaften (joint-stock companies, comparable to “public” companies in common law jurisdictions). The fourth part deals with the Australian regulatory approach. These analyses will then inform the discussion of how to reform the German law. A reform proposal, based partly on the Australian model, but also taking into consideration the peculiarities of German corporate law, will be made for modernising the German law relating to the enforcement of duties of members of management boards and claiming damages from them when the company suffered such damages because of breaches of their duties.
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