The Looming Corporate Calamity: Restoring Corporate Legitimacy

The Looming Corporate Calamity by Richard Tudway is a masterful analysis of the evolution of the limited liability corporation from its 19th Century origins to today's crisis in the corporate governance of publicly traded corporations. He argues that structural failures in the modern corporation and abuses of corporate power have triggered a collapse in public confidence. These failures centre on the classic agent/principal problem and the unitary board system common to Anglo American jurisdictions. He outlines what has to be done to reform corporate governance and restore corporate legitimacy.

It is a book that needs to be read by all students of business, business leaders, other professionals and citizens at large who seek to understand why public confidence in corporate behaviour has now reached rock bottom. The problems, as he explains, are connected with the evolution of corporate governance principally in Anglo American jurisdictions. In other jurisdictions governance arrangements have evolved differently. There are important lessons to be learnt from these differences.

He identifies clearly the fundamental governance issues that have to be addressed and the reforms that have to be introduced. The book runs to 14 chapters with five supporting Annexes. Throughout it is supported with detailed references to key literature sources. Each Chapter has its own questions for review and tasks for readers to address in reaching a complete understanding of what is so fundamentally wrong with corporate governance as it stands.