In dit artikel gaat de auteur in op de voorgestelde wijzigingen van de Nederlandse Corporate Governance Code op het terrein van risicomanagement. De auteur is positief over de voorgestelde wijzigingen. Wel zijn nog enkele verbeteringen mogelijk.

This article provides an overview regarding the Singapore International Commercial Court (the ‘SICC’). It describes the scope and services of the SICC and discusses amongst other things the relation between the SICC and mediation / international arbitration.

In RJR Nabisco besliste het Amerikaanse Hooggerechtshof dat de Europese Unie en haar lidstaten in de VS geen civiele vordering konden indienen op basis van de Amerikaanse racketeeringwetgeving wanneer de schade van racketeering buiten de VS is ingetreden. De redenering van het Hof dat deze uitspraak internationale spanning voorkomt, overtuigt niet, integendeel. Deze uitspraak past in een evolutie waarbij Amerikaanse rechtbanken een steeds isolationistischer houding aannemen tegenover transnationale zaken. Men mag verwachten dat dergelijke zaken, met inbegrip van strafzaken, zich steeds meer zullen verplaatsen naar andere jurisdicties, waaronder de EU en Nederland.

Onderzoek naar de wijze waarop letselschades worden afgewikkeld in Engeland, Noorwegen en Nederland brengt relevante verschillen in afwikkelingsculturen aan het licht. De Engelse wijze van afwikkeling is sterk gericht op afwikkeling in rechte en is vergaand vercommercialiseerd. De Noorse praktijk kenmerkt zich door een op sociale zekerheid gebaseerde afwikkelingscultuur buiten rechte, die in hoge mate is gebaseerd op onderling vertrouwen. De Nederlandse praktijk van schadeafwikkeling heeft met de Engelse gemeen dat zij vorm krijgt in een commerciële setting tegen de achtergrond van het civiele aansprakelijkheidsrecht. Met de Noorse praktijk heeft zij gemeen dat het proces van afwikkeling in hoge mate is gebaseerd op overleg buiten rechte en op onderling vertrouwen.

The authors establish that in the West mercy in public life, in particular as acts of judges and governors, underwent a wrongful decline. This decline is an effect of the tension between mercy and justice that grew during the transition of medieval, Christian into modern, secular law and justice. To prove this, the authors present a broad historical overview. Eventually, they argue in favour of an incidental application of mercy in public life, under strict conditions. However, in a secular society and law system mercy can be made acceptable only for the political and public debate. In this situation, an appeal to a more neutral sounding virtue such as compassion will be more convincing.

This case confirms that if both the transferor and transferee are affiliated to the same mandatory industry-level pension scheme, following the transfer, the transferee is liable for due but unpaid pension contributions dating from before the date of the transfer.

De auteurs duiden in dit artikel de situatie waarin een advocaat een derde door middel van een ‘reliance letter’ laat afgaan op zijn due diligence-rapport. Zij gaan daarbij in op de vraag of in die situatie een zorgplicht van de advocaat tegenover de derde ontstaat en wat de omvang van die zorgplicht is. De auteurs zien goede redenen om aan te nemen dat de advocaat en de derde op basis van de reliance letter een overeenkomst aangaan, maar achten onaannemelijk dat een (eigen) zorgplicht van de advocaat tegenover de derde ontstaat.

This article reports on a conceptual model that provides insight into the relationship between Twitter use by community policing officers and citizens’ safety perceptions. The model has been tested using data from a relatively large-scale survey study and these results are supporting the model. Furthermore, a small impact of Twitter use has been found on feelings of safety and judgments about the police. To confirm these findings, further research on a larger scale is necessary. To find out more about the exact positive and negative effects of Twitter use by community policing officers, a more experimental design is required.

Met de per 1 juli 2016 geïntroduceerde wijzigingen van de Aanbestedingswet 2012 is het kader voor aanbestedingsrechtelijke uitsluitingsgronden gewijzigd. In dit artikel staan de uitsluitingsgronden centraal die voor beoefenaars van het mededingingsrecht relevant zijn. Met name wanneer ACM boetes oplegt wegens overtreding van (sectorspecifieke) regelgeving, gaan deze uitsluitingsgronden in latere aanbestedingen een rol spelen. Aspecten van een besluit die een impact hebben op de aanbestedingsrechtelijke kansen van ondernemingen zijn onder meer: de duur van de overtreding, de aard van de overtreding, de wijze van afdoening, de rechtspersonen waaraan de overtreding wordt toegerekend, de publicatiedatum en de mate van verwijtbaarheid.

This article discusses hedge funds activism based on Hirschman’s classic. It is argued that hedge funds do not create the loyalty concerns underlying the usual short-termism critique of their activism, because the arbiters of such activism are typically indexed funds, which cannot choose short-term exit. Nevertheless, the voice activated by hedge funds can be excessive for a particular company. Furthermore, this article claims that the short-termism debate cannot shed light on the desirability of hedge funds activism. Neither theory nor empirical evidence can tell whether hedge funds activism leads to short-termism or long-termism. The real issue with activism is a conflict of entrepreneurship, namely a conflict between the opposing views of the activists and the incumbent management regarding in how long an individual company should be profitable. Leaving the choice between these views to institutional investors is not efficient for every company at every point in time. Consequently, this article argues that regulation should enable individual companies to choose whether to curb hedge funds activism depending on what is efficient for them. The recent European experience reveals that loyalty shares enable such choice, even in the midstream, operating as dual-class shares in disguise. However, loyalty shares can often be introduced without institutional investors’ consent. This outcome could be improved by allowing dual-class recapitalisations, instead of loyalty shares, but only with a majority of minority vote. This solution would screen for the companies for which temporarily curbing activism is efficient, and induce these companies to negotiate sunset clauses with institutional investors.

This article explores the investigative methods used by corporate security within organisations concerned about property misappropriation by their own staff and/or others. The research methods are qualitative: interviews, observations and case studies carried out between October 2012 and November 2015. The findings include that, even though corporate investigators do not have the formal investigative powers enjoyed by police and other public agencies, they do have multiple methods of investigation at their disposal, some of which are less used by public investigative agencies, for example the in-depth investigation of internal systems. Corporate investigators also rely heavily on interviews, the investigation of documentation and financial administration and the investigation of communication devices and open sources. However, there are many additional sources of information (for example, site visits or observations), which might be available to corporate investigators. The influences from people from different backgrounds, most notably (forensic) accountants, (former) police officers, private investigators and lawyers, together with the creativity that is necessary (and possible) when working without formal investigative powers, make corporate security a diverse field. It is argued that these factors contribute to a differentiation between public and private actors in the field of corporate security.

The evolution of the case law in the field of free movement of goods has been marked by consecutive changes in the legal tests applied by the Court of Justice of the European Union for the determination of the existence of a trade restriction. Starting with the broad Dassonville and Cassis de Dijon definition of MEEQR (measures having equivalent effect to a quantitative restriction), the Court subsequently introduced the Keck-concept of ‘selling arrangements’, which allowed for more regulatory autonomy of the Member States, but proved insufficient to capture disguised trade restrictions. Ultimately, a refined ‘market access’ test was adopted, qualified by the requirement of a ‘substantial’ hindrance on inter-State trade. Contrary to the free movement of goods, the free movement of capital has not undergone the same evolutionary process. Focusing on the ‘golden shares’ case law, this article questions the broad interpretation of ‘capital restrictions’ and seeks to investigate whether the underlying rationale of striking down any special right that could have a potential deterrent effect on inter-State investment is compatible with the constitutional foundations of negative integration. So far the Court seems to promote a company law regime that endorses shareholders’ primacy, lacking, however, the constitutional and institutional legitimacy to decide on such a highly political question. It is thus suggested that a refined test should be adopted that would capture measures departing from ordinary company law and hindering market access of foreign investors, while at the same time allowing Member States to determine their corporate governance systems.

Op 15 september 2016 heeft de Europese Commissie als onderdeel van haar Digital Single Market-strategie een rapport gepubliceerd waarin de voorlopige bevindingen van haar e-commerce sector inquiry zijn opgenomen. Dit rapport brengt de praktijken aan het licht die tot een beperking van de concurrentie zouden kunnen leiden. De bevindingen uit het rapport kunnen mogelijk een grote impact hebben op de e-commerce sector in de Europese Unie. In dit artikel worden de belangrijkste door de Commissie geïdentificeerde ontwikkelingen en praktijken beschreven alsmede of die ontwikkelingen en praktijken aanleiding geven tot mededingingsbezwaren. Het definitieve rapport wordt in het eerste kwartaal van 2017 verwacht.
European Commission, Preliminary Report on the E-Commerce Sector Inquiry, Commission staff working document, 15 september 2016, SWD(2016) 312 final.

This article investigates and classifies the different meanings of the term sovereignty. What exactly do we try to convey when using the words “sovereign” or “sovereignty”? I will argue that, when saying that X is sovereign, we can mean five different things: it can mean that X holds the capacity to force everyone into obedience, that X makes the laws, that the legal and political order is created by X, that X holds the competence to alter the basic norms of our legal and political order, or that X is independently active on the international stage. These different usages of the term are of course related, but they are distinct and cannot be fully reduced to one another.

This article challenges the assumption, widespread in European constitutional discourse, that ‘national identity’ and ‘constitutional identity’ can be used interchangeably. First, this essay demonstrates that the conflation of the two terms lacks grounding in a sound theory of legal interpretation. Second, it submits that the requirements of respect for national and constitutional identity, as articulated in the EU Treaty and in the case law of certain constitutional courts, respectively, rest on different normative foundations: fundamental principles of political morality versus a claim to State sovereignty. Third, it is argued that the Treaty-makers had good reasons for writing into the EU Treaty a requirement of respect for the Member States’ national identities rather than the States’ sovereignty, or their constitutional identity.

In police practice and science, police culture is often seen as having a significant influence on the behavior of police officers. With his article Police (canteen) subculture, Waddington challenged this perspective in 1999. He argued that the expressive talk in the canteen is an area of action that is separated from the behavior on the street. This led to a discussion in the police literature about how to interpret the relation between police culture and police behavior. In this article this discussion is enriched with new empirical research. This research resulted in 22 patterns that police officers use to make sense of their environment in order to act in that environment. A distinction is made in three environments: organization (canteen), street (surveillance) and situation (encounter with citizens). The distinction in different environments for sensemaking helps to re-interpret the relation between police culture and police behavior and shows that police culture and police behavior are related in rather complex ways. Police culture influences the behavior on the streets through the cultural knowledge they share in the canteen, and which they use to make sense of concrete situations in which they have to act. At the same time, the point made by Waddington seems also true. The patterns of interaction between police officers have also a function in affirming their worldview and beliefs, regardless of their behavior on the streets. His perspective is just to one dimensional. A multidimensional view on the relation between police culture and police behavior is preferable if we want to understand the relation between police culture and police behavior.