公司法资本制度改革的逻辑与路径——基于商业实践视角的观察

公司法资本制度改革的逻辑与路径——基于商业实践视角的观察

Logic of and Approaches to the Reform of the Corporate Capital System

    期刊名称：《法学研究》
    期刊年份：
    作者：刘燕
    单位：北京大学法学院
    中文关键词：公司法资本制度;法定资本;商业实践;认缴制
    英文关键词：corporate capital system;legal capital;commercial practice;the subscription regime
    中文摘要：
    从商业实践的视角观察公司法资本制度的逻辑与演进，有助于理解全球性公司资本制度改革的不同路径以及我国2013年改革的争议。法律对公司资本的约束起源于描述股东出资设立公司的过程，揭示资合公司的起点与治理架构的基点。公司实体的持续存在催生了“资本维持”的初始观念，“有限责任”的外部性则最终塑造出法定资本制的核心规则。但法定资本制简单而朴素的逻辑难以适应变化多端的商业实践，由此见证了会计、估值、债务契约、证券监管等辅佐、分担或替代了法定资本制的部分功能。法定资本制改革具有内在动力。改革抛弃了传统而僵化的“法定资本”概念，将资本制度的重心从债权人利益保护转移到股东权益的合理配置。我国公司法在规则层面实现了资本制度的现代化，但与之对应的商业理性与行为模式不可能一蹴而就，需要相关配套制度和商业实践来弥补认缴登记制立法的疏漏。
    英文摘要：
    An examination of the logic and the evolution of capital system in the company law from the perspective of the commercial practice is conducive to understanding different approaches to the reform of corporate capital system worldwide and the controversy over the reform of the capital system in China carried out in the end of 2013. The legal constraints on corporate capital originate from the description of the process of incorporation of a business by its charter. The continued existence of corporate entities brought about the original idea of "capital maintenance", which evolved into the whole legal capital regime in 19th century where people struggled with the concept of the limited liability. The law, however, is good at qualitative, rather than quantitative analysis, which results in the failure of legal capital system to catch up with the rapid development of commerce. As a result, a number of commercial technologies, such as accounting and valuation, have emerged to help legal capital system function, while debt covenant practice and securities regulation have gradually shared part of the burden of legal capital. All these have become inherent incentives for the reform of the legal capital system. Reform means that it will abandon the ossified traditional concept of "legal capital" and will deal with the issue of capital not for the sole purpose of protecting the creditors as it used to do, but mainly for mediating the conflicts of interests between shareholders and other participants of a company. In this sense, the Company Law of PRC has realized the modernization of the capital system at the regulatory level, but it still has a long way to go after the reform, due to the lack of commercial history and credit environment. So, much still needs to be done with the new capital regime under the Chinese Company Law.
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