Competing social conceptions of the corporation

Because of the striking differences in their styles of corporate governance, I've been following rather closely the news reports on the efforts of Netherlands-registered Mittal to take over Luxembourg-registered Arcelor. Two recent reports, including a long one on Mittal's governance structure:

Peter Marsh, "Arcelor investors expected to take issue with E4bn loan," Financial Times, U.S. edition, 27 April 2006, 21.

John Plender, "Mittal kingdom: why governance may be an impediment in the pursuit of Arcelor," Financial Times, U.S. edition, 28 April 2006, 9.

In a paper that I presented last month at a conference at Washington and Lee University's School of Law, I used the Mittal-Arcelor case briefly to illustrate competing social conceptions of the corporation today -- will post a link to the article manuscript when I'm finished revising it. Meanwhile, I am delighted to hear that historian Philippe Mioche at the Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, is writing an article on the history of the two firms.

For news reports on Arcelor's annual shareholder meeting, held on Friday, click here.