German and East Asian Perspectives on Corporate and Capital Markets Law

This volume offers a broad comparative analysis of the challenges that digitisation and artificial intelligence pose for corporate and capital markets law in Germany, China, Japan and South Korea. It proceeds along three lines of inquiry. The first examines cyber risks: the supervisory frameworks that oblige companies to protect their information systems, and the duties and liability of directors that follow from them. The second addresses the use of artificial intelligence in corporate governance, asking whether decision-making authority may be delegated to algorithmic systems and what the duty of care requires of directors who rely on machine-generated advice. The third analyses crypto-assets and novel financing techniques, covering the treatment of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins under securities regulation, the licensing of service providers, electronic and tokenised securities offerings, and initial coin offerings. The contributions work doctrinally and comparatively, analyzing the statutes, supervisory practice and case law of each jurisdiction against one another, and cover regulatory developments from the first legislative responses to the frameworks or still in or put into force. The volume thereby contributes to the comparative study of corporate governance and financial market regulation between Europe and East Asia and illustrates that the regulatory responses devised by different legal systems are sometimes strikingly similar and sometimes markedly diverse - and that these observations cut across the boundaries of legal traditions.