Managing Directors’ Liability Risk in the Digital Economy

Dear Colleagues,

Recently, the digital revolution and the advent of the new data economy era have introduced serious challenges to corporate governance and the management of large enterprises across the globe. More severe data protection regulations have been enacted in many jurisdictions, and digital assets management has quickly become one of the core concerns across a variety of business sectors. Against this backdrop, several interesting and largely unexplored legal issues have arisen in connection to the potential liability of directors and officers in the event of data breaches or cyber-attacks. The prominence of this topic has been highlighted by a number of high-profile cyber incidents in the United States, and leads to a reinterpretation of the classic topic of directors’ liability, taking into account these emerging risks to which companies and individual directors and officers are exposed.

This Special Issue aims at investigating the most critical issues: directors’ liability for their organizational/management decisions; extent of directors’ liability for damage suffered by companies, shareholders and investors; directors’ liability for the amounts corresponding to fines and penalties imposed on companies; insurance and reinsurance coverage; alternative risk transfer and financing tools.

Such emerging risk for directors highlights a new vulnerability for companies and a specific liability risk that directors and officers face, making it relevant to identify the most appropriate legal tools (e.g., insurance coverage) for managing at least the economic consequences. In this perspective, it is thus necessary to rethink the scope of D&O and cyber risk insurance policies and assess corporate risk management plans’ adequacy to new risks.

The relevance of these topics, and for the related insurance profiles, deserves increasing attention and requires extensive research in order to clarify this area of law. A critical review of the legal and institutional solutions may also lead to a general improvement in this specific legal field.

This Special Issue aims to provide a picture of the “state of the art” in different legal systems while encouraging adequate reflection, which only an appropriate comparative research can offer. We therefore welcome contributions covering these topics from any jurisdiction.

Deadline for abstract submission: 30 April 2021.

Deadline for manuscript submission: 30 September 2021.

Prof. Dr. Alberto Monti
Dr. Lydia Velliscig
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Laws is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Comparative law
• Insurance law
• Financial markets and securities law
• Directors’ duties and liabilities
• D&O insurance
• Class actions
• Digital economy
• Cyber risk
• Data privacy and security
• Sanctions