Zeitschrift für Japanisches Recht | Journal of Japanese Law - Sonderheft | Special Issue 18

The contributions in this special issue highlight that shareholder activism has become a relevant factor throughout major economies. Across jurisdictions, the debate about the advantages and disadvantages of activist investors shows striking similarities, oscillating between hoped-for increases in company profitability and concerns about feared short-termism. However, the broad comparison undertaken in this issue also reveals that activist investment takes place in a dynamic environment, one that is highly dependent on the specific legal, political, and cultural framework, thus offering rich opportunities for future research.

The contributions assembled here are enlarged, edited versions of the lectures given at the comparative conference “Shareholder Activism in Japan, the EU, the UK and the US,” convened at Goethe-University Frankfurt on 13 March 2025. The conference was initiated by Hiroshi Oda of the University College London (UCL). It was jointly organized by the UCL and Goethe University Frankfurt, in cooperation with the German-Japanese Association of Jurists (DJJV) and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg (MPI, represented by Harald Baum), with Moritz Bälz (Goethe University Frankfurt) serving as the local host.

The book first addresses the current situation in Japan from different perspectives. The second half of the volume focuses on comparative perspectives and provides overviews of shareholder activism in the US, Germany, France, and the UK.