New and Rediscovered Legal Structures in Company Law

How has the tableau of corporate forms in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland changed over the years? A new volume edited by Institute Director Holger Fleischer, Susanne Kalss (Vienna University of Economics and Business), and Hans-Ueli Vogt (University of Zurich) explores this question. The work brings together papers presented and discussed at the Twelfth Symposium on Corporate and Capital Markets Law, held in Vienna in June 2023.

The volume unfurls the panorama of corporate forms encountered in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It gives an overview of the current canon of organizational forms along with their historical lines of development, it analyses forces of inertia as well as those supporting reform, and it describes the pent-up demand for legislative action and potential future structures. Special attention is paid to hybrid configurations as well as to rediscovered and new organizational forms found on the periphery of corporate law. These include in particular the GmbH & Co. KG, cooperatives, corporate and private foundations, social enterprises, and the non-profit GmbH; also considered is the proposal for a company with tied assets.

The conference proceedings have been published by Mohr Siebeck and are also available as a digital publication in open access.

Image: © Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law