Takeover authorities in Europe are primarily structured as takeover panels or as integral components of financial supervisory authorities. Compared with the supervisory structures, panel-based regimes are commonly perceived as providing a greater level of flexibility, predictability and speed. A closer analysis reveals that, while the panel structure tends to promote flexibility and predictability, no inherent and unalterable connection between these attributes and the institutional identity of the takeover authority can be identified.

In today’s climate, researchers may feel pressured to always adopt the most complex, cutting-edge research techniques. Although such techniques have advantages, they also have disadvantages. In this chapter, we walk the reader through each stage of the research process: developing research questions and hypotheses, recruiting participants, selecting a study methodology and associated statistics, and disseminating results. At each stage, we compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of what we call “Column A” approaches (i.e., relatively simple, tried-and-true research techniques) versus “Column B” approaches (i.e., newer and more complex techniques). We argue that the best overall solution, both for individual researchers and for the field as a whole, is to adopt a diverse mix of different techniques. Throughout, we consider how open science techniques might potentially aid in achieving a healthy balance between different approaches. We also suggest mechanisms whereby often-expensive Column B approaches could be made more widely accessible.

The rise of public regulation of private law relationships has resulted in a thorny legal landscape across regulated markets shaped by the complex interplay between multiple actors, including legislators, regulatory agencies, and courts, and fraught with tensions between public and private interests. This chapter sets out the book’s purpose, namely, to offer a new theoretical perspective on the relationship between market regulation and private law that is built on the claim that these two forms of legal discourse are two sides of the same coin that can be reconciled with each other. The chapter explains the background to this study and the research design, focusing on the interaction between EU private law as a subset of market regulation and traditional national private law. It begins with a brief account of the growing role of market regulation in the private law domain and then proceeds to identify the core questions that the collision between market regulation and private law gives rise to, which underlie the book. The chapter further explains the novelty of this work in relation to existing literature on private law and regulation, as well as its approach to the subject.

The rise of market regulation in the private law domain has challenged the exclusive role of traditional private law, notably contract and tort law, in governing relations between private parties. At present, well-established private law norms, such as the principle of good faith or a duty of care, increasingly coexist with regulatory standards. This chapter explores the relationship between regulatory standards and private law norms, focusing on how national private law responds and should respond to market regulation with a European origin. It develops three models of the relationship between EU regulatory standards and traditional private law norms relating to the same subject matter – separation, substitution, and complementarity – and discusses their key characteristics, manifestations, and implications. This analysis shows that each of the models strikes a balance between the competing considerations differently, putting more or less weight on the pursuit of the common good or interpersonal justice, legal certainty or individual fairness, and uniformity or diversity. The chapter also assesses these models in terms of their potential to reconcile EU regulatory standards with traditional private law norms and draws out some of the practical implications of this analysis for EU private lawmaking and enforcement.

Fundamental rights increasingly determine the balance between public and private interests within both market regulation and private law, shaping the relationship between these two forms of legal discourse. This chapter takes stock of the case law of national, international, and supranational courts on the horizontal effect of fundamental rights and explores the potential of such rights to contribute to reconciliation between market regulation and private law. It shows that fundamental rights can play a double role in this context. On the one hand, fundamental rights can reinforce the regulatory dimension of private law, prompting courts to rebalance the interests of the parties to private law relationships in the light of public virtues. On the other hand, fundamental rights can enable courts to bring regulatory measures in line with the traditional private law reasoning focused on individual preferences and interpersonal justice. In both instances, courts may step beyond what the EU or national legislators intended to achieve through public regulation in terms of reorienting private law relationships towards the common good or enhancing interpersonal justice. Fundamental rights thus serve as a two-way bridge between market regulation and private law.

Relationship science has grown tremendously in the four-plus decades since its inauguration as a distinct social science discipline. Much has been accomplished. A deep, conceptually rich literature has begun to take shape; the field’s methodological toolbox has evolved to the point where specialized tools for studying relationships are well-known and accessible; and the importance of relationships for human health and well-being is firmly established. At the same time, further advances in knowledge and impact will require surmounting several headwinds. We outline these challenges, focusing on four general themes: the need for more cumulative, better integrated core organizing principles; fuller appreciation of the role of context and diverse relationship structures; continuing development of the field’s research methods; and the need to more effectively disseminate its findings into interventions and the public sphere. In our view, the field’s future influence will depend on its ability to meet and capitalize on these challenges.

This chapter revisits the long-standing debate on the efficiency of the mandatory bid rule within the context of the Takeover Directive (TOD). It re-examines the consensus on the mandatory bid rule’s operation and explains why the rule is often viewed as an expensive way of achieving a type of equality that has little relevance to investors. While the mandatory bid rule is often criticized for being inflexible and inefficient, this chapter explores whether the widespread use by sophisticated market participants of contractual analogues of the mandatory bid rule, tag-along rights, in the booming private markets may suggest beneficial second-order effects of sharing rules that can somewhat limit its costs. While it is accepted that the case for company-level optionality regarding the mandatory bid rule is indeed strong, it seems unlikely that the TOD will be amended in the foreseeable future. Instead, the chapter explores whether developments over the past two decades since enactment of the TOD may have provided Member States with some de facto country-level optionality, and whether some limited experimentation with the mandatory bid rule may thus be possible in the EU.

Relationship satisfaction has major implications on individuals’ health and subjective well-being, and prominent theories in relationship research have assigned relationship satisfaction an important role. In this Handbook chapter, we first introduce conceptual perspectives on relationship satisfaction, showing that relationship satisfaction is a characteristic of both the individual and the relationship. We then provide an overview of the measurement of relationship satisfaction and discuss common affordances in its assessment. Next, we report empirical evidence on how relationship satisfaction evolves over time, showing that relationship satisfaction changes both normatively and depending on the eventual outcome of the relationship. We then report how relationship satisfaction is associated with different relationship-specific facets, such as perceptions, emotion regulations strategies, and communication styles. To conclude, we discuss a series of unresolved issues in the area of relationship satisfaction research and propose an agenda for future research, such as the usage of modern technologies.