Company incorporation regimes in the UK, the US and Australia – In search of the golden mean
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Badar Mohammed Almeajel Alanazi 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
The purpose of the law on incorporation has been heavily contested by academics. On one side of the debate are scholars who argue that company law should have an “enabling” role, in that it should empower business owners to arrange their affairs in a manner that best suits their purposes at the same time as minimising any interference from the state. On the other side of the debate are those who argue that company law should impose on the world of commerce strong regulatory measures to prevent such abuses. This conflict between the “enabling” and the “regulatory” role of company incorporation law is visible in many jurisdictions, with each of them achieving a different balance between the two approaches. Many scholarly studies have elaborated on how companies are incorporated and regulated. Some of them have been used in the current paper such as studies carried out by Bayern et al. (2017) and Reyes (2018). However, this paper examines the extent to which the incorporation regimes in the UK, the US, and Australia can be said to be “enabling” or “regulatory” in nature, through a detailed analysis of the law on company incorporation, ownership structure and the protection provided to the relevant stakeholders through the principles of separate legal personality.
Keywords: Company Incorporation, United Kingdom, United States, Australia
Authors’ individual contribution: The Author is responsible for all the contributions to the paper according to CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) standards.
Declaration of conflicting interests: The Author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
JEL Classification: M13, G30, G39
Received: 08.04.2020
Accepted: 10.06.2020
Published online: 15.06.2020
How to cite this paper: Alanazi, B. M. A. (2020). Company incorporation regimes in the UK, the US and Australia – In search of the golden mean. Journal of Governance & Regulation, 9(2), 83-91. https://doi.org/10.22495/jgrv9i2art6
