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This chapter addresses the manner in which European legislators have responded to increased corporate mobility, which set in train the transformation of the close corporation form into a more flexible, all purpose vehicle. Section 2 analyses and assesses the opportunities for increased mobility and corporate law reform imported by the EU-level initiatives such as the merger directive and the European Company. Section 3 surveys the evolution of recent ECJ judgments that may disrupt the corporate law equilibrium and also accentuate pressure on national corporate law systems. Its sets out a detailed map of the current and potential paths of corporate law reform. Section 4 considers the residual barriers to corporate mobility. The possibility of free choice of corporate situs and tax residence and the question as to which additional routes could improve and stimulate cross-border mobility in the EU are considered. Section 5 gives an example of how increased competitive pressures could induce lawmakers to adopt company law rules that are value-enhancing.

When Council Regulation (EC) No 2157/2001 on the Statute for a European Company (Societas Europaea, SE) became effective on 8 October 2004, it offered existing publicly traded companies, for the first time, a choice between competing company laws, namely the national law of the company's home state and the law of the supranational SE. Using an event study methodology, this chapter analyses a unique dataset of publicly traded firms that have announced to re-incorporate under the SE Regulation. The findings offer insights into how the market accepts the new European legal form.

This chapter examines diaspora as a territorializing practice of foreign policy. It is concerned with understanding the changes in India's diaspora policy, from inclusion during the colonial period, to rejection from 1947–1999, followed by a selective reincorporation from the early 2000s. The chapter first offers a historical summary of the emergence of a globally dispersed Indian nation. It argues that India turned its back on its diaspora on gaining independence to assuage the concerns of its Asian neighbors. By the end of the century, however, India was concerned with bringing elements of its overseas population “home,” in particular, upper-caste and middle-class Hindus. This process of reterritorialization and deterritorialization was driven by contradictions in the definition of the Indian nation exacerbated by domestic social upsurge.

This chapter explains that the urban Marranos were effectively consigned to waiting for the right visitors to appear, people who would see them simultaneously as B'nai Anusim—descendants of the forced converts—and as historically situated individuals living very much in the Portuguese present. It shows that the few visitors who were able to hold those two aspects of their condition in tension realized that their primary need, more than an appropriate ritual of reincorporation, was a concrete program of face-to-face instruction, guidance, and community building before they could live as fully fledged Jews. Ultimately, what proved most important was for them to forge lasting bonds with visitors who would incorporate them into the global “Jewish family” through personal relations of love and care.

This chapter presents the first of two case studies. It offers a detailed narrative of a vision quest, which is one part of an initiatory process. Set in the one million acres of the Cranberry Wilderness Preserve in Hillsboro, West Virginia, the chapter describes the ritual protocols and experience of going forth to find a vision for one’s life, a near-death experience, and returning to share one’s vision for the sake and survival of the village. It discusses Huichol Shamanism and the vital role nature plays in rites of passage.

This chapter discusses fundamental or structural changes affecting the relationship of participants in a firm, such as charter amendments, mergers, reincorporations, or share issuances, and how corporate law mitigates the opportunism that can accompany such changes. Jurisdictions differ in their assessment of which situations require a statutory protection mechanism, and the legal strategies to address them. Strategies include: judicial review; double-majority or supermajority requirements; majority-of-the minority requirements; and exit rights. Across all jurisdictions, the law tends to allocate the decision right to the shareholders, thus reversing the board’s power to take independent decisions. Most fundamental changes discussed involve either a management-shareholder conflict or a majority-minority shareholder problem. For charter amendments, most jurisdictions provide for an ex post decision right strategy to ratify the amendment, although there are differences across jurisdictions, taking into account shareholder structure and prevailing agency conflicts. The issuance of new shares can be seen as a course of action that may dilute minority shareholders’ stake; this is frequently addressed by preemptive rights.