This article discusses the management of systemically important banks in distress with the primary aim of creating a platform for further discussion. As a backdrop, the experiences gained in Sweden from two crises in less than 20 years are presented. After a discussion of the liquidity factor and central banks' role as lender of last resort, the focus is on handling the initial acute phase of a crisis. The appropriate goals of a crisis management system are discussed, as are ways of achieving immediate control of a bank in distress and principles related to the valuation of a bank in need of assistance. The main point presented is that the analytical building blocks are universal and by identifying them a common ground for further analysis could be established. One conclusion is that the proposed EU regime for crisis management in the financial sector will not be the final word. Finally, some thoughts regarding a pan-European system for crisis handling, based on a common corporate law for banks, are presented.

When Council Regulation (EC) No 2157/2001 on the Statute for a European Company (Societas Europaea – SE) became effective on 8 October 2004, it offered existing publicly traded companies, for the first time, a choice between competing company laws, namely the national law of the company's home state and the law of the supranational SE. Using an event study methodology, we analyse a unique dataset of publicly traded firms that have announced to re-incorporate under the SE Regulation.

The Societas Europaea (SE) has developed unexpected popularity in Germany (cf., the empirical study in Eidenmüller, Engert and Hornuf, Die Aktiengesellschaft 2008, 721 et seq.). Since the incorporation of Allianz SE, more publicly listed enterprises have taken this legal form (e.g., BASF SE, Fresenius SE, Porsche SE). The SE has become attractive to mid-sized companies in Germany as well. Legal advisers and legal scholars in Germany consequently have had a breadth of experience with this new supranational company type. This experience forms the basis of the following recommendations to further improve the legal framework and increase the attractiveness of the SE for large and mid-sized companies in Germany and Europe.

After a slow start, the European Company (Societas Europaea – SE) has become increasingly popular. Besides documenting the growth of this new company type, we examine whether firms choose to incorporate in the SE corporate form because they engage in ‘legal arbitrage’ by exploiting differences in legal rules between jurisdictions. We specify a number of hypotheses on particular legal arbitrage motives. To validate our hypotheses, we use a broad telephone survey among SE users in Germany as well as a simple country-level regression model based on a unique, hand-collected dataset on SE incorporations. We find strong evidence that firms use the SE to mitigate the effect of mandatory codetermination rules. Establishing a one-tier board structure (in jurisdictions that impose a two-tier structure on their national public companies) and taking advantage of the SE's mobility for tax purposes also seem to be driving SE formations. By contrast, our analysis fails to support the suggestion that firms use the SE to shop for the most favourable national company law to fill the gaps in the SE Regulation.