The Legal Protection of Minority Shareholders Under Ethiopian Law: Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Business organizations are important to operate business activities that demand the involvement of many persons. In these days, therefore, business organizations are getting momentum in every sector of the economy. Business can be run in different forms of business organizations, one of which is a company. This article is to show the deficiencies of legal protection of minority shareholders under Ethiopian company law compared with the England and German company laws. Since Ethiopia commercial law is under the process of revision, this article will have a paramount importance and can be used as input for amendment of commercial code of Ethiopia.

Thus, we tried to analyze specifically, the legal protection of Ethiopian law offers for minority shareholders by comparative perspective. It includes the rights of minority shareholders; the substantive protection of minority shareholders such as the right to call general shareholders meeting, right to propose resolution, right to challenge decision of the company, right to appointment of independent audit, right to access information and voting rights. The article finally ends up with some concluding remarks and the deficiencies of Ethiopian minority shareholders protection, if any, and lessons to be learned from UK and Germany laws would be reflected as recommendation to the Ethiopian commercial code.

Keywords: Minority share holders, Protection of Minority share holders, Company law.

DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/86-03

Publication date:June 30^th 2019