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International Company and Commercial Law Review
Recent developments 代写留学生论文in Australian corporate law and their implications for directors' duties: lessons to be learned from the UK perspective

Subject: company law

Keywords: Australia; Comparative law; Corporate governance; corporate social responsibility;
Directors' powers and duties

Introduction
In Australia and the United Kingdom, directors' duties have been scrutinised and review made fortheir reform. The UK Government launched a fundamental review of the framework of core companylaw in March 1999, with the publication of a general consultation paper, “Modern Company Law for aCompetitive Economy”. Successive reports from the independent Company Law Review SteeringGroup (CLRSG)produced a substantial number of recommendations for change and proposed astatutory statement of directors' duties to provide greater clarity on what is expected of directors andmake the law more accessible.Further, the CLRSG set out the case made by those who argue thatwhat is required is a reformed definition of the concept of shareholder primacy. It called this broaderapproach “enlightened shareholder value”, which requires a director to promote the success of thecompany for the benefit of its members as a whole, and in doing so, to have regard, among othermatters, to: the likely consequences of any decision in the long term; the interests of the company'semployees; the need to foster business relationships with suppliers, customers and others; the impactof the company's operations on the community and the environment; and finally the need to act fairlyas between members of the company. The Government accepted most but not all of theseproposals,3 and went on to enshrine enlightened shareholder value in s.172 of the Companies Act2006. Correspondingly, the Australian review of corporate law is in response to widespread interest inthe topic of corporate social responsibility, and its implications for companies, investors and otherinterest groups, including the environmental and social context.This is most obviously reflected inthe publication of two important Reports in 2006, which includes the recent investigation by theAustralian Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services (the ParliamentaryJoint Committee, PJC) of corporate social responsibility and its subsequent report, “CorporateResponsibility: Managing Risk and Creating Value”,and the even more recent report of Australia'sCorporations and Markets Advisory Committee (CAMAC)on the same topic. The scope of theCAMAC inquiry is comprehensive, and there are many issues common to both the CAMAC inquiryand the inquiry of the Joint Parliamentary Committee.

A fundamental issue facing this review of Australian corporate law related to, among other 313 things, the conduct of business corporations and issues of social responsibility, as well asresponding to the questions raised in the terms of reference from the Government of whether existinglegal requirements should be amended expressly to require or permit directors to have regard toenumerated special interests. The basis for such consideration is the power of corporations to affectthe “economic, social and environmental”interests of these non-shareholder constituencies,particularly those that are vulnerable to any abuse of that power. Similar to the CLRSG, following aseries of consultations, the Parliamentary Joint Committee and the CAMAC were of the view that theshareholder primacy 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。