Bibliographie sélective OHADA

Corporate governance is defined as the system by which companies are managed and controlled. The concept came to the fore with the Cadbury Report in England in 1992 and has since been the topic of much academic discussion. The recent collapse of companies like Enron and WorldCom raised serious questions about international corporate governance practices. This has resulted in widespread reform. In the United States large-scale prescriptive measures were implemented through the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The United Kingdom persisted with their principle-based approach of comply or explain, although some amendments were made to the Combined Code through a joint effort by the Co-ordinating Group on Audit and Accounting Issues, the Smith Report and the Higgs Report. In Australia change took the form of the ASX Corporate Governance Principles and CLERP 9. South Africa, influenced by its common law background, followed a similar approach to that of the United Kingdom but has recently adopted a more prescriptive approach similar to that of the US. The King Committee was set up to review corporate governance in South Africa and two reports report were published – one in 1994 and another in 2002. Amendments to the JSE Listings Requirements followed. The Konar Report made recommendations on the reform of the accounting and auditing profession. The Department of Trade and Industry has recently launched a review of South African company law in conjunction with a review of the audit and accounting professions. These recent developments in company law will however not be discussed in depth as it is at a very early stage and is still subject to change. The aim of this study is to evaluate and determine whether or not the reform in South Africa is adequate to address the questions raised by recent corporate scandals in South Africa. The question also has to be asked whether South Africa should follow international trends in reform just for the sake of reforming. This requires an understanding of the principles underlying corporate governance and the reasons for the existence of corporate governance rules. With the increasing separation between ownership and control the accountability of directors has waned considerably. When addressing corporate governance issues, this must be kept in mind constantly. While the focus of recent reform has been on the company, its directors and auditors, the role of shareholders should not be ignored. What is needed to prevent directors and managers from abusing their positions of power are more informed and involved shareholders. The different role players must also cooperate in developing a culture of ethical behaviour and an environment of openness and accountability.

Trade marks are among the most valuable commodities of the modern business world. Adequate protection for trade marks to prevent the misappropriation of their incredible marketing power is therefore important. The aim of this dissertation is to make recommendations regarding the further development of existing South African law regarding the protection of registered trade marks against dilution, particularly by the courts. Current statutory protection is examined and compared with trade-mark law in the United States and the European Union. Although the concept of dilution originated in Germany, most of its development took place in the United States, starting in 1927 with an article by Frank Schechter. Dilution occurs when the awareness that a specific mark signifies a single product from a single source changes to an unmistakable awareness that the same mark signifies various things from various sources. The primary theories as to how dilution occurs are blurring and tarnishment. Although the dilution concept is widely recognised, there is still a debate amongst legal scholars on whether trade marks deserve protection against dilution. The extent of protection that the law gives to trade marks largely depends on the socioeconomic functions that a trade mark is perceived to fulfil. The original source or origin function is protected by the traditional infringement provisions. The identification or distinguishing function, quality function and advertising function subsequently gained recognition. The advertising function is statutorily recognised in various jurisdictions, which prevents trade-mark dilution. Statutory recognition of dilution in the United States first occurred in State law from 1947 onwards. Protection is generally given to distinctive or strong trade marks where a similar mark is used on dissimilar goods in the absence of confusion in such a way that there is a likelihood that the reputation of the senior mark will be injured. The parameters of the concept were developed and refined mainly through case law. Federal protection against dilution was only introduced in 1995. The new Act, although widely welcomed, also brought some unpredictability and interpretation problems. The first statutory dilution protection for trade marks in Europe is found in the Uniform Benelux Trade Marks Act. In 1989 the European Union adopted the Trademark Directive, with the aim of harmonising the legal protection afforded to trade marks. Its "dilution" provisions were incorporated into the United Kingdom's Trade Marks Act of 1994. The sometimes conflicting interpretations of these provisions by the English courts and the Court of Justice of the European Communities are discussed. The South African Act shows a substantial degree of harmony with legislation in the United Kingdom and other European countries. Aspects of the wording of the dilution provisions are however open to interpretation by the courts. Until the end of 2003 there was only one major trade-mark dilution case decided by a South African court, namely SAR v Laugh It OjJPromotions, which is discussed in detail. The dissertation concludes with recommendations to aid South African courts in the future interpretation and application of the dilution provisions. Amendments to the legislation are also proposed to promote greater clarity.

OHADA (in English, Organization for Harmonization in Africa of Business Laws) is a system of business laws and implementing institutions. Sixteen West African nations adopted this regime in order to increase their attractiveness to foreign investment. Because most of the member states are former French colonies, the OHADA laws are based on the French legal system. Despite certain economists’ recent, well-publicized assertions that any French-based legal system is incompatible with development, other studies challenge those claims and in doing so outline characteristics that a pro-development system of business laws should possess. This Article reviews selected provisions from OHADA’s corporate law and of OHADA’s institutions, revealing that they correspond to those pro-development characteristics. Interviews conducted with legal professionals in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cameroon highlight the local perception that the OHADA regime, while still

In the universal history of mankind, the concepts “culture” and “trade” have long denominated two important trains of human aspirations and activities. Notwithstanding their great significance for human life in its entirety, they have been widely regarded as belonging to distinct spheres, which were deemed to be difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile. This perception was also widely reflected in the sphere of law, where their respective fields have been subject to separate regimes based on the logic of their mutual exclusivity and expressed in the concept of res extra commercium. By contrast, the concept of “cultural industries”, which was originally derived from the term Kulturindustrie coined by protagonists of the Frankfurt School introduced a new category of cultural goods and services, which began to strongly challenge the traditional legal separation of cultural from economic considerations. Their novelty as well as their more subtle conceptual implications led to the controversy over the treatment of the dual, i.e. both cultural and economic, nature of such goods and services, which surfaced first during the bilateral trade negotiations between Canada and the United States and soon afterwards during the multilateral Uruguay Round negotiations. In the latter, it was the controversy over the exception culturelle that almost derailed the successful establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Since then the problem remains unsolved, and reinforced by the decision of the WTO Panel in the Canada Periodicals Case, the quest for an appropriate conceptual approach allowing for the correct legal answer to the conundrum of culture and trade continues up to this day. In this quest, the present thesis forms an attempt to cast some light on the culture and trade conundrum with a view to isolating options for an appropriate legal response of the multilateral trading system under the WTO. It follows the evolution of the concept of cultural industries, from its birth in the context of critical social theory across the field of political economy to its first appearance in the legal context with the 1988 Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement. After a short analysis of the cultural industries exemption in the North American context, its focus shifts to the GATT/WTO system of which the basic provisions are discussed in connection with the category of cultural goods and services known as the cultural industries. Their critical analysis yields the present imperfections inherent in the WTO system as a corollary of the fragmentation of the international legal order. Before some final conclusions are drawn, these imperfections are contrasted with the relevant experiences within the context of the process of European integration from the European Economic Community to the European Union.

Regional economic integration arrangements have their own purpose, legal framework, institutional set-up, history, and trajectory, and this paper aims to study these factors in relation to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). When dealing with regional integration, it is important to consider governance, trade liberalization, and its social impact. The paper focuses on the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA) to analyze labour law harmonization, poverty reduction strategies for development, gender empowerment, and democratic participation. Suggestions to strengthen socio-economic development include promoting social dialogue and how the International Labour Organization and other institutions' can help with better integration in Western Africa. Ultimately, identifying and understanding the unique economic integration arrangements of certain communities can help develop their paths towards a fairer globalization for all.

A critical and in-depth discussion of the powers of the labour court to review arbitration awards of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, the application of the author's findings relating to common-law, legislation and case law and a critical analysis thereof. Special reference is made to the provisions of sections 145 and 158(1)(g) of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 including, in particular, the alternative application thereof in practice and scope for improvement in order to address potential prejudice to parties occasioned by the compulsory nature of (certain) dispute resolutions. This thesis incorporates a comparative study of the British and German labour law systems with reference to the relevant appeal and/or review procedures (as applied in their tribunals/courts), together with a discussion and application of certain other provisions relevant to South Africa labour law.

This thesis seeks to address corporate governance from both a practical as well as an academic perspective. It searches for solutions to self-interest and agency costs, problems that it is posited are innate to the anthropomorphism of the corporation and to the separation of management and ownership of widely held, publicly traded, corporations. Practically, this dissertation is anchored in experience, garnered from empirical research, based on in depth and general surveys, as well as detailed interviews. It examines the workings of corporations, including their boards of directors, of gatekeepers, of checks and balances and of shareholders and the relative importance and rationale for the roles that they play. Based on the academic and empirical efforts it is posited that self-interest and the funneling syndrome, (a process whereby information required for decision making is constrained and managed by those in control), almost always predetermines the outcome of the corporate formal decision making process involving the board of directors. This facilitates abuse. When it occurs and there appears to be no accountability, confidence essential to the capital markets, quite understandably, suffers. A hypothesis is advanced to explain the complexity of a potential failure of corporate governance through a relatively simple formula. It draws conclusions as to what is required to help address the challenges raised by the breakdown in effective corporate governance and to help instill greater investor confidence. A self-assessment mechanism to help quantify how effectively a corporation is dealing with corporate governance, both on an absolute basis (comparing itself year over year) and on a relative basis (compared to one's peers) is proffered. This tool of more effective corporate governance, seeks to identify the causes for breakdowns in corporate governance and to assist a board of directors in dealing more proactively with this challenge.

Online reputation mechanisms are emerging as a promising alternative to more established mechanisms for promoting trust and cooperative behavior, such as legally enforceable contracts. As information technology dramatically reduces the cost of accumulating, processing and disseminating consumer feedback, it is plausible to ask whether such mechanisms can provide an economically more efficient solution to a wide range of moral hazard settings where societies currently rely on the threat of litigation in order to induce cooperation. In this paper we compare online reputation to legal enforcement as institutional mechanisms in terms of their ability to induce cooperative behavior. Furthermore, we explore the impact of information technology on their relative economic efficiency. We find that although both mechanisms result in losses relative to the maximum possible social surplus, under certain conditions online reputation outperforms litigation in terms of maximizing the total surplus, and thus the resulting social welfar

The past two decades has seen a growing interest, from both policy makers and scholars, in the legal regulation of work performed by self-employed workers. Increases in non-agricultural selfemployment in industrialised countries, together with political and ideological shifts, have fuelled interest in self-employment as a means of increasing employment. The attractions of selfemployment are manifold. To firms, self-employment is part of a two-fold change in the way firms operate: the move towards more flexibility as to the size and composition of the workforce, marked by an increased use of atypical workers and the disintegration of firms by arranging production through outsourcing, subcontracting and franchising. To workers, self-employment offers the greater autonomy connected with being their own boss, a chance of higher returns, or, at least, opportunities of gainful employment in times of high unemployment. To governments, self-employment has been seen as a means of increasing the number of small businesses, supposedly beneficial to the creation of new employment. Encouraging and removing barriers to self-employment is, therefore, a priority for many governments.

This is the version of record of an article authored by Michael Trebilcock and published by the Cambridge University Press. The official publisher's version can be accessed at: doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511494833.006

Los modelos de negociación con opciones exteriores normalmente suponen que los pagos de estas opciones son independientes de las acciones que los negociadores toman durante el proceso negociador. Sin embargo, en muchos contextos, la opción exterior depende de lo que las partes hagan durante la fase negociadora. Uno de estos contextos es el de aquellas negociaciones que se llevan a cabo en presencia de un árbitro. Esta tesis realiza algunas contribuciones a la teoría de la negociación con opciones exteriores, enfatizando aquellas situaciones donde las opciones exteriores aparecen por la intervención de árbitros. En el capítulo 2 analizo los efectos del arbitraje en las negociaciones cuando su uso es voluntario. Considero un modelo de negociación por concesiones donde las partes tienen la posibilidad de llamar a un árbitro con el consentimiento del oponente. Demuestro que la introducción del arbitraje distorsiona el resultado de la negociación. Esta distorsión depende de los costes relativos de implementar una partición mediante un proceso negociador versus un proceso arbitral. Si los costes del arbitraje son pequeños en relación a los costes de la negociación, entonces la partición negociada se aproxima a la propuesta por el árbitro, y en casos extremos el arbitraje es utilizado en equilibrio. Sin embargo, los jugadores no eligen siempre el método más eficiente de resolver su disputa: a veces negocian cuando es más eficiente acudir al arbitraje. En el capítulo 3 estudio los efectos de diferentes procedimientos arbitrales en el resultado de una negociación, en un modelo donde los jugadores realizan demandas no crecientes y el árbitro es llamado solo cuando las negociaciones se declaran rotas. Dos procedimientos arbitrales son analizados: el arbitraje convencional, donde el árbitro es libre de elegir su acuerdo y el arbitraje de oferta final, donde el árbitro está obligado a elegir una de las últimas ofertas de los jugadores. Demuestro que si los jugadores son suficientemente pacientes y el árbitro sigue un procedimiento de oferta final, en equilibrio, los jugadores negocian una partición pero toma algún tiempo llegar a ella. Sin embargo, si el árbitro sigue un procedimiento convencional, en equilibrio los jugadores utilizarán esta institución para resolver su disputa. Finalmente, en el capítulo 4 discuto el papel que juegan las opciones exteriores inciertas en las negociaciones cuando existe información incompleta acerca de su existencia. Examino una guerra de desgaste donde los jugadores disfrutan de información privada acerca de sus posibilidades de dejar la mesa de negociación para tomar una opción exterior. Hay dos tipos de jugadores: los tipos débiles, que no tienen opciones exteriores y prefieren conceder que salirse del juego, y los tipos fuertes que tienen opciones exteriores tales que prefieren salirse que conceder. El principal mensaje que surge del análisis de este juego es que la incertidumbre acerca de la posibilidad de que el oponente se vaya, mejora la eficiencia porque incrementa la probabilidad de concesión. Más precisamente, si la probabilidad de que el oponente sea fuerte es relativamente alta, la negociación acaba con una concesión segura. En el otro extremo, si la probabilidad de que el oponente sea débil es alta, los tipos fuertes dejarán en algún momento el juego con probabilidad igual a 1, dejando a los débiles jugando, desde ese momente en adelante el ineficiente equilibrio de la guerra de desgaste clásica. Incluso en este caso, la probabilidad de concesión a lo largo de la fase de incertidumbre del juego se incrementa.

Societies have, since time immemorial, traded real goods and services for expectations of goods and services in some future. These expectations have been associated with tangible and, lately, intangible property - which is generally called money. From the crude quantity theory of money, the purchasing power of a monetary unit is given as 1/ P = T/(Mv). P is the price of the traded goods and services T, M is the total money supply and its turnover rate is v. The total money supply M is dominated by bank credit. In the South African law (and elsewhere) the judicial recognition given to bank credit (1) as money seems to have happened as an unintended side-effect to accepting cheques as delivery vehicles in a cash transfer without any tangible money moving from the transferor to the transferee. In payment of money, the law of property and the law of contract overlap and become inseparable. Both the English and South African laws define payment as performance of a preceding duty. The Supreme Court of Appeal, in the Vereins- und Westbank case seems to have declared an abstract transfer of ownership of money to be payment even though no preceding duty to pay was found. The profit of a financial investment is called interest and is calculated from a simple or compound interest formula. Despite medieval legal, theological and ethical objections, neither is illegal in the South African positive law. The last remnant of the medieval protection of a guilty debtor (often the ruler) at the expense of an innocent creditor is the in duplum rule. This is particularly obnoxious during modern rampant inflation that was unknown and could not be predicted when only metallistic money was in use. The influence of the in duplum rule is being limited by recent restrictive judgments in South Africa and in Zimbabwe. In South Africa, the Government has a constitutional duty to ensure that its subjects are not deprived of property. Specifically, the Constitution prescribes in Section 224(1) that the South African Reserve Bank must 'protect the value of the currency'. It is shown that the recent Reserve Bank policies, unless urgently modified, are in conflict with the publicly promised inflation rate of no greater than 6%. The exchange rates depend fundamentally on the price levels of the traded or tradable goods and services in the respective economies. This leads to the concept of purchasing power parity, which is most accurately reflected in the relationship between interest rates in different states and their relative foreign exchange depreciation rates. It is submitted that the South African Exchange Control Regulations have outlived their usefulness (if ever they had any) and are unconstitutional - at least in so far as they interfere with the South African Reserve Bank's obligation to pursue its primary object 'independently and without fear'. In the main, the South African Courts have applied restrictive interpretation to the Exchange Control Regulations and they have justifiably ignored the public international law obligation of the Republic to recognise the Exchange Control Regulations of fellow IMF members extraterritorially. (1) To money related claims on banks - see the body of the thesis for the two-creditor-two-debtor legal aspects in the 'bank credit'.

This is an accepted manuscript of an article authored by Michael Trebilcock, and later published in International Economic Governance and Non-Economic Concerns.

This is the version of record of a paper presented at the Third EnviReform Conference, authored by Michael Trebilcock.

There has been a dramatic shift in the focus of trade policy concerns in recent years from the barriers that lie at the border to the barriers which exist “within the border.” The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) and other regional trading arrangements have been largely successful in reducing both the levels of tariffs worldwide and the scale of other border measures such as quotas. This has revealed a new and more subtle category of measures which restrict trade – the numerous regulations which governments enact to protect the health and safety of their citizens and the environment in which they live. Such regulations vary tremendously across borders: one nation's bunch of grapes is another nation's repository of carcinogenic pesticide residue. These efforts to protect citizens from the hazards of everyday life have become a virtual minefield for trade policy makers, in part because such differences can often be manipulated or exploited to protect domestic industry from international competition, and in part because even when there is no protectionist intent on the part of lawmakers, through a lack of coordination, mere differences in regulatory or standard-setting regimes can function to impede trade through increasing multiple compliance costs. It has thus become increasingly difficult to delineate the boundaries between a nation's sovereign right to regulate and its obligation to the international trading community not to restrict trade.

From an economic perspective, globalization is dismantling national barriers to entry and is transforming domestic markets into a global market. To meet the challenges posed by the integration of markets, corporations are joining forces with their former competitors to expand their presence in the global market. Rapid growth in transnational mergers to create global corporations is one of the key features of globalization. As multinational corporations are uniting, so should antitrust agencies that regulate them. Antitrust agencies around the world are realizing that the consumers whom they are mandated to protect are being adversely affected by decisions made beyond their national borders. By using the "effects" test, countries bring within their jurisdiction review of any merger or acquisition involving foreign companies with significant revenue or assets within their jurisdiction. The proliferation of merger control laws, in the absence of a mechanism to coordinate the transnational merger review, places an unnecessary burden on merging parties, and runs the risk of divergent outcomes, which at times cause friction among nation-states. Both to alleviate unnecessary burdens imposed on corporations and to reduce inefficiencies produced by the disparate review of a single transnational merger by several countries, this thesis proposes an International Merger Control Regime integrated into the WTO. The proposal focuses on ways to operationalize a "Lead Jurisdiction" model of oversight rather than on the creation of a new supranational decision-making agency. WTO dispute settlement and arbitration would be used to resolve conflicts arising out of the inability of a Lead Jurisdiction to arrive at an outcome satisfactory to other significantly affected jurisdictions.