Criminal Liability of Managers in Europe: Punishing Excessive Risk

Every managerial decision is risky, at least to some extent. Conducting business is impossible without venturing into new territories and even the most ordinary daily choices could turn out to be failures. Excessive risk, however, can be very detrimental, as was starkly illustrated by the most recent financial crisis. By criminalising managers’ excessive risk-taking, criminal law enters a sphere which is at the core of the activity it affects. At the same time it provides for criminal punishment for courses of conduct that, without doubt, can be extremely harmful. This book examines existing criminalisation of excessive risk-taking and analyses whether such criminalisation is desirable and under which conditions.
Volume 8 in the series Hart Studies in European Criminal Law