Controlling Shareholders and Intra‐Group Transactions: A Special Framework

Abstract

Controlling shareholders and their activities in publicly traded companies have long stirred debate and controversy. Still dominating the corporate landscape across the world, concentrated ownership has been associated with both extraction of private benefits of control (P.B.C.) and entrepreneurship. Drawing on the theories on corporate control, this article contributes to accomplishing the law’s goal of promoting the entrepreneurial role of controlling shareholders, yet keeping P.B.C. extraction under restraint at the same time in the specific context of intra-group transactions – a breeding ground for both P.B.C. extraction and the implementation of an entrepreneurial idea by corporate controllers. The article submits nuanced and different means of overseeing intra-group transactions in a way that would optimally allow the implementation of a business plan by a controlling shareholder in a corporate group and protect minority shareholders, along with the examination of other issues that are relevant to the oversight of intra-group transactions.

Keywords

• controlling shareholders
• related-party transactions
• intra-group transactions
• corporate groups
• minority shareholder protection