National differences in corporate governance practices in Europe, such as board structures, shareholder structures, and labor participation rights, make it difficult to operate in the European cross-border mergers and acquisitions environment. Particularly thorny issues are "golden shares" and labor participation in corporate decision-making. The widespread use of golden shares among its European neighbors was critical for Germany in causing the collapse of the proposed takeover directive in the European parliament in July 2001. Another area in which the harmonization efforts of the European Union were struggling is labor participation in company decisions. On October 8, 2001, after 31 years of negotiation, the European Union gave birth to the Societas Europea, or SE. The legislation, which is set to enter into force in 2004, allows companies that operate in more than one state of the European Union to establish as a single company under European Union law. European harmonization efforts notwithstanding, to date, individual country law dominates in both domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions in Europe. This paper reviews the social setting and the regulatory framework for mergers and acquisitions or, more generally, for the transfer of cash flow rights on complex assets in Germany.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in its series Working Papers with number
2002-027.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)