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Freedom of Choice in European Corporate Law

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Freedom of Choice in European Corporate Law Freedom of Choice in European Corporate Law t Jens C. Dammann I. IN TRO D U CTIO N ............................................................................................................................477 ........................ II. CAN THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY GRANT FREE CHOICE? ................................... 483 A . The R eal Seat R ule ......................................................................................................483 B . R eincorporation ..............................................................................................................487 1. Corp orate L aw ....................................................................................................487 2. Taxation ..............................................................................................................490 3. Conclusions on Reincorporation ........................................................................491 C. The Need To Litigate in the State of Incorporation........................................................ 492 1. The Need To Litigate in the State of Incorporationas a Burden ........................492 2. Legal Factors that Compel the CorporationTo Litigate in the State of Incorp oration...................................................................................................... 493 3. PracticalFactors that Compel the CorporationTo Litigate in the State of Incorporation ......................................................................................................497 D. Language Barriersand Legal Advice .............................................................................502 E. The Cost of Changing One's Lawyer ..............................................................................502 F. Conflicts of Interest on the Part of Lawyers ...................................................................505 G . Sum m ary .........................................................................................................................506 ........................... I1. SHOULD THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY GRANT FREE CHOICE? .......................... 507 A. The Quality of Substantive CorporateLaw Rules ...........................................................507 1. CorporateDemand for Efficient Rules ...............................................................508 2. State Com p etition................................................................................................ 520 3. Federal Influence ................................................................................................533 B . L egislative C osts .............................................................................................................535 C. Economies of Scale and Network Benefits ......................................................................536 1. The Generationof Legal Precedents ..................................................................536 2. The Marketfor Legal and Law-Related Services ...............................................539 D . P olitical Externalities .....................................................................................................541 IV . C ON CLUSION ...... .... ......................................................................................................542 I. INTRODUCTION U.S. corporations are free to choose the state law governing their internal affairs,' a concept that this Article will refer to as free choice. The t Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, LL.M., J.S.D., Yale Law School, First State Exam (J.D.), Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt. This article is based on part of my J.S.D. dissertation. My deepest gratitude is due to my supervisor Henry Hansmann for his invaluable guidance and support. I also wish to thank Roberta Romano and Ian Ayres for their many valuable suggestions. Furthermore, I have benefited from the help of Manfred Wolf, Helmut Kohl, Wulf Ddser, Wolfgang Schon, Yael Ben-Zion, Mark-Oliver Mackenrodt, Andrew Hessick, Tal Tirosh and, last but not least, Amina Dammann. 1. See, e.g., ROBERTA ROMANO, THE ADVANTAGE OF COMPETITIVE FEDERALISM FOR SECURITIES REGULATION 63 (2002) [hereinafter ROMANO, ADVANTAGE]; Alan E. Garfield, Evaluating State Anti-Takeover Legislation: A Broadminded New Approach to CorporationLaw or "A Race to the THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 29: 477 legal mechanism by which U.S. law ensures free choice is the state of incorporation doctrine. 2 Under that doctrine, the internal affairs of a corporation are governed by the law of the state of incorporation, regardless of where the corporation's headquarters are located.3 At any time, therefore, corporations can change the state law which applies to them by choosing to reincorporate elsewhere. The concept of free choice has long been the topic of intensive legal research. In particular, scholars have focused on the question of whether the freedom of corporations to choose between the law of different states will lead to more efficient rules. Amid the variety of positions that have been developed on this issue, the two most prominent ones are commonly known as the race- to-the-bottom and the race-to-the-top views. 4 While both assume that states compete for corporate charters in order to maximize the revenues derived from incorporation fees,5 they differ as to the direction that such competition takes. Under the race-to-the-bottom view, states will compete for corporate charters not by making their coTorate law more efficient, but by making their law more management-friendly. Proponents of the race-to-the-top view reject Bottom"?, 1990 COLUM. Bus. L. REv. 119, 122. The term "internal affairs" refers to "the relations inter se of the corporation, its shareholders, directors, officers or agents." See RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONFLICT OF LAWS § 41 cmt. a (1977). 2. The state of incorporation doctrine in the sense described above is also referred to as the "internal affairs doctrine." See, e.g., David M. Majchrzak, Note, CorporateChaos: Who Should Govern Internal Affairs?, 24 T. JEFFERSON L. REV. 83, 84 (2001); Note, The Internal Affairs Doctrine: Theoretical Justifications and Tentative Explanationsfor Its Continued Primacy, 115 HARV. L. REV. 1480, 1480 (2002). 3. See, e.g., Deborah A. DeMott, Perspectives on Choice of Law for Corporate Internal Affairs, LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS., Summer 1985, at 161, 163. The Revised Model Business Corporation Act specifically endorses the state of incorporation rule. See MODEL BUS. CORP. ACT § 15.05(c) (1984) ("This Act does not authorize this state to regulate the organizations or internal affairs of a foreign corporation authorized to transact business in this state."). 4. Some scholars have suggested that there is neither a race to the bottom nor a race to the top. See, e.g., Ian Ayres, Supply-Side Inefficiencies in Corporate Charter Competition: Lessons from Patents, Yachting and Bluebooks, 43 KAN. L. REV. 541, 543 (1995) [hereinafter Ayres, Supply-Side Inefficiencies] (suggesting that even under the assumption that managers demand value-maximizing corporate law, the results yielded by state competition may not be optimal). 5. See William L. Cary, Federalism and Corporate Law: Reflections upon Delaware, 83 YALE L.J. 663, 684 (1974); Roberta Romano, Law as a Product: Some Pieces of the Incorporation Puzzle, 1 J.L. ECON. & ORG. 225, 233 (1985) [hereinafter Romano, Law as a Product]. 6. As early as 1933, Justice Brandeis claimed that competition among states for corporate chartering revenues was a race "not of diligence but of laxity." Louis K. Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517, 559 (1933) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). William L. Cary later coined the phrase "race for the bottom." Cary, supra note 5, at 666. See also Lucian Arye Bebchuk, Federalism and the Corporation: The Desirable Limits on State Competition in Corporate Law, 105 HARV. L. REv. 1437, 1440 (1992) [hereinafter Bebchuk, Desirable Limits] ("[Sitate competition causes a race for the top with respect to some corporate issues but a race for the bottom with respect to others."); Lucian Arye Bebchuk & Allen Ferrell, A New Approach to Takeover Law and Regulatory Competition, 87 VA. L. REV. 111, 130 (2001) [hereinafter Bebchuk & Ferrell, New Approach] (arguing that state competition leads states to protect managers from takeovers to an inefficient extent); Lucian Arye Bebchuk & Allen Ferrell, Federalism and CorporateLaw: The Race To Protect Managersfrom Takeovers, 99 COLUM. L. REv. 1168 (1999) [hereinafter Bebchuk & Ferrell, Federalism] (claiming that state competition probably does not maximize shareholder wealth); Joel Seligman, The Case for Minimum Corporate Law Standards, 49 MD. L. REv. 947, 971-74 (1990) (suggesting federal corporate law norms for Congress in three specific areas); Joel Seligman, The New CorporateLaw, 59 BROOK. L. REv. 1, 60-63 (1993) (suggesting partial federalization of corporate law); Guhan Subramanian, The Influence of Antitakeover Statutes on Incorporation Choice: Evidence on the "Race " Debate and Antitakeover Overreaching, 150 U. PA. L. REv. 1795, 1801 (2002) (taking the view that the federal government should play a greater role in the area of corporate law). 2004] Freedom of Choice In European CorporateLaw that reasoning, claiming that it neglects the influence exerted by capital markets. Managers, they argue, have a strong incentive to make the corporation's shares attractive to shareholders, lest capital markets punish
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