China’s National Security Review: a tit-for-tat response?

China is gradually taking its place as a major regulator, exercising concurrent jurisdiction of the national security review along with the US and EU over high-profile cross-border mergers and acquisitions. The National Security Review (NSR) regulatory regime of foreign acquisitions has attracted significant attention recently with the establishment of China's counterpart to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Due to the intensified activities of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) that are closely linked with states, CFIUS's broad discretion to deal with China's SWF-based investment may have a far-reaching impact on China's implementation of the newly enacted NSR regime. It is essential to design a mechanism that allows SWFs to maximise their positive attributes while safeguarding the apolitical integrity of the marketplace. Any disproportionate use of the NSR regime would inevitably bring about more unintended consequences, such as tit-for-tat protectionism. This represents an imminent threat to the tenuous recovery from the recent economic crisis, largely because of the increasingly intertwined and interdependent nature of the global financial markets. It is of utmost significance to evaluate the extent to which the updated legislation strikes a reasonable balance between preserving genuine national security interests and maintaining an open environment for investment.

Interlocking directorates and conflicts of interest: The Rotterdamsche Bankvereeniging, Müller & Co. and the Dutch financial crisis of the 1920s

How can interlocking directorates cause financial instability for universal banks? A detailed history of the Rotterdamsche Bankvereeninging in the 1920s answers this question in a case study. This large commercial bank adopted a new German-style universal banking business model from the early 1910s, sharing directors with the firms it financed as a means of controlling its interests. Then, in 1924, it required assistance from the Dutch state in order to survive a bank run brought on by public concerns over its close ties with Müller & Co., a trading conglomerate that suffered badly in the economic downturn of the early 1920s. Using a new narrative history combined with an interpretive model, this article shows how the interlocking directorates between the bank and this major client, and in particular the direction of influence of these interlocks, resulted in a conflict of interest that could not be easily overcome.

Dimensions of Financial Autonomy in Low-/Moderate-Income Couples from a Gender Perspective and Implications for Welfare Reform

The ‘unitary household’ lives on in policymakers’ assumptions about couples sharing their finances. Yet financial autonomy is seen as a key issue in gender relations, particularly for women. This article draws on evidence from semi-structured individual interviews with men and women in thirty low-/moderate-income couples in Britain. The interviews explored whether financial autonomy had any meaning to these individuals; and, if so, to what extent this was gendered in the sense of there being differences in men's and women's understanding of it. We develop a framework for the investigation of financial autonomy, involving several dimensions: achieving economic independence, having privacy in one's financial affairs and exercising agency in relation to household and/or personal spending. We argue that financial autonomy is a relevant issue for low-/moderate-income couples, and that women are more conscious of tensions between financial togetherness and autonomy due to their greater responsibility for managing togetherness and lower likelihood of achieving financial independence. Policymakers should therefore not discount the aspirations of women in particular for financial autonomy, even in low-/moderate-income couples where there remain significant obstacles to achieving this. Yet plans for welfare reform that rely on means testing and ignore intra-household dynamics in relation to family finances threaten to exacerbate these obstacles and reinforce a unitary family model.

Financial Taxes and the Sand in the Wheels of Financialization:Legal Challenges for the EU Directive Implementing Enhanced Cooperation in the Area of Financial Transaction Tax

One of the many results of the Global Financial Crisis was the insight that the financial sector is under-taxed compared to other industries. In light of the huge bailouts and continued subsidies for financial institutions that are characterized as too-big-to-fail demands came on the agenda to make finance pay for the mega-crisis it caused. The most prominent examples of such taxes are a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) and a Financial Activities Tax (FAT). Possible effects of such taxes on the economic constitution and increasingly in particular on the European Single Market have been discussed controversially over the last decades already. Especially with the decision of eleven EU member states to adapt an FTT using the enhanced cooperation procedure a number of additional legal challenges for implementing such a tax have emerged. This paper analyzes how tax measures of indirectly regulating the financial industry differ, what legal challenges they pose, and what their overall contribution would be in making the financial system more stable and resilient. It also analyzes the legal arguments against enhanced cooperation in this area and the legal issues related to the British lawsuit against the Commission’s Directive proposal in the European Court of Justice on grounds of the extra-territoriality application of tax. The paper concludes that the feasibility of an FTT is legally sound and given the FTT’s advantages over a FAT the EU Directive should be implemented as a first step for a European-wide FTT. However, significant uncertainties about its implementation remain at this stage.

Law, Politics and Financial Development: The Great Reversal of the U.K. Corporate Debt Market

This article examines the role of creditor protection in the development of the U.K. corporate bond market. This market grew rapidly in the late nineteenth century, but in the twentieth century it experienced a reversal, albeit with a short-lived post-1945 renaissance. Such was the extent of the reversal that the market from the 1970s onwards was smaller than it had been in 1870. We find that law does not explain the variation in the size of this market over time. Alternatively, our evidence suggests that inflation and taxation policies were major drivers of this market in the post-1945 era. Copyright © The Economic History Association 2013

The impact of the global financial crisis on managing employees

Purpose: This paper aims to provide a brief overview of the global financial crisis (GFC), highlighting its most frightening dimensions, the policy responses and issues around the management of labour during and post-GFC. Further, this paper introduces the five research papers that encompass this special issue. Design/methodology/approach: The papers presented here are early contributions on how the GFC has impacted the management of people. The key areas focused upon include the human resource management responses of multinational enterprises, the response of trade unions, the roles of employee representative bodies and the rationalisation of post-crisis managerial strategies. Findings: The major conclusions of this special issue are that the impact of the GFC was variable across countries and sectors in addition to the process of decision making, the types of decisions made, and the determinants and consequences of those decisions. Originality/value: The papers of the special issue provide some of the first empirical findings on how the GFC has impacted on people management, trade unions and the HR function in different contexts. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

The determinants of financial participation schemes within multinational companies in Ireland

Using a survey of multinational companies (MNCs), we investigate the factors that determine the use and scope of financial participation in MNCs operating in Ireland. We explore the impact of six factors - country of origin, age, employment size (Irish and worldwide employment size), ownership structure, trade union recognition and sector. Descriptive results find that financial participation schemes are quite common within MNCs in Ireland. Many of these schemes are only available to higher levels of staff. Multivariate analysis reveals that five out of the six factors (the exception was sector) had varying impacts on financial participation schemes. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Exploring the impact of institutional and organizational factors on the reaction of MNCs to the global financial crisis

This paper analyses some of the factors that impact multinational companies' (MNCs) reaction to the global financial crisis. This paper reports the results from a large-scale study of its impact on MNCs in Australia, considering occurrences of site closures, offshoring, outsourcing, labour force reductions, reductions in working hours, salary reductions, and reductions in training and travel. Evidence showed that MNC reactions varied according to certain institutional and organizational effects. For example, MNCs originating from liberal-market economies are more likely to have offshored and outsourced production and reduced employment. The implications for understanding of MNC behaviour are discussed. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.