Thursday, November 6, 2014

Presenter: Tamar (Tami) Ozery, Michigan Law School
Faculty Discussant: Mary Gallagher, Political Science

Abstract:
“China and Its Controlled Capital Markets: Problems and Prospects for Shareholder Activism”

Involvement by public shareholders in corporate decisions was proven to improve corporate governance norms; increase firm’s performances and shareholders value; and ultimately boost capital market activity. Accordingly, different legal systems utilize various forms of shareholders activism as a monitoring mechanism against opportunistic behavior by corporate insiders, even in the absence of a market for corporate control. In China’s concentrated ownership capital market structure, the process of “corporatization without privatization” and the “State Capitalism” economic form, amount to an open oppression of minority shareholders and hinders the market for corporate control. The paper sets out to examine the applicability of novel forms of shareholders activism, found successful in other concentrated markets, to China, and finds that public shareholders’ participation in China is meant to remain passive. Under such reality, the paper hypothesizes on a possible future emergence of idiosyncratic forms of shareholders activism in China, assuming developments in its capital market but still preserving State-Capitalism – mainly the emergence of activism and contested control within the controlling apparatus.

Bio:
Tami Groswald Ozery is a Michigan Grotius Fellow and a SJD candidate at Michigan Law School, where she also completed her LLM degree in 2013. Tami runs the Michigan Law SJD Colloquium Series, as well as coordinates the Michigan Law Research Scholars and SJDs Program. Before joining Michigan Law in 2012, Tami was a practicing corporate lawyer in a leading Israeli law firm, where she headed the firm’s China Desk, operating from Israel and China. While residing in China, she was also a CSC and Israeli Foreign Ministry language scholar in East China Normal University, Shanghai. Tami was a Teaching Assistant in first year Constitutional Law course and a Research Assistant in WTO Dispute Settlement course, both at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.