The public interest and the company in Britain and Germany: Project funded by the Anglo-German Foundation, 1998-1999

This study is principally concernedwith public interest agendas in relationto the company and how far these dif-fer in Germany and Britain. It is not concerned with the detail of external corporate regulation, but with how the internal structures of the company are constituted by particular political understandings of the public interest, which become embodied in formal and informal rules.·We examine factors which shape the politics of the public interest in relation to the company: firstly, the role of political ideas and interests in creating political coalitions which express a particular conception of the public interest; secondly, the extent to which rules and norms embodied in institutions and legal cases shape subsequent expectations of how the company is related to the public interest, and how it should behave; thirdly, how the constraints and opportunities of the global economy shape attitudes towards the boundaries of legitimate interference in company affairs; and fourthly, whether European integration substantially shapes company law in a way that can be distinguished from national legislation