- 期刊
股東表決權信託與表決權拘束契約相關問題：美國德拉瓦州法與臺灣法對照
Shareholder Voting Trust, Shareholder Agreement and the Related Problems: Delaware and Taiwan Law in Review
摘要
股東表決權信託，或者廣義下的股東表決權契約，傳統上一直是公司法上的困難問題。其困難的原因，主要在於此類設計將公司股份中的政治權利（或投票權）與剩餘的經濟權利分離，因而在處理此種分離的約定時，法院或立法者經常左右於是否開放或是否鼓勵的兩難，或者換句話說，搖擺於應多尊重當事人間的自治安排，或是對這種安排採取嚴格審查的限制立場。本文回溯此一關連制度在美國德拉瓦州公司法的緣起，試著藉由回溯20世紀初期以降的發展，透過一連串個案的分析，去理解相關制度在立法與司法上的處理與矛盾。並分析法院的保守態度背後所呈現出的真實顧慮。在搭配臺灣的案例分析後，本文認為相關的顧慮，主要是反映出法院對於此類分離所呈現出「雙重代理問題」的憂心。在權衡此一顧慮在公司法的核心地位後，本文建議針對臺灣的情形，以漸進與小規模適用之方式，解釋或允許使用股東表決權信託與股東表決權契約，並佐以相對清晰的程序要件，以回應相關的顧慮。最後，本文提出對於銜接階段的相關處理的建議。
並列摘要
Shareholder voting trust, or in a broader sense including other forms of voting agreement, has been one troubling question in corporate law for several decades. It is so mostly because of its intended consequence of separating the political right in corporate share from its economic beneficiary position. This article traces back the root of this issue in the Delaware law and a line of its cases. By doing so, this article tries to explain why a separation of this sort poses a plausible threat to the fundamental corporate law setting and provide a picture of how courts have been struggling with diverse issues in this legal design. Obviously shown in cases, these issues range from poor contract drafting, post-signing changes and opportunistic behaviors thereof, to the inevitable incompleteness in a long-time horizon in corporate voting setting. A long history of this back-and-forth in Delaware's law, often in name of ＂public policy＂ or ＂public interest＂, vividly illustrates the magnitude of threat, if not insolvability, of this corporate law design and its practice in the real world. After a careful analysis of issues arising from the course of shareholder voting trust/voting agreement's cases both in the U.S. and Taiwan, this article identifies ＂a mix of agency problems＂ as the main threat in separating votes and freely transferring them from shares. Using this observation as the baseline, this article then weighs in a possible balance among the contractual freedom in transacting voting right, the possible threat it poses, and the cost of a total prohibition. With the help of hindsight as well as being restricted by the current legislation, this article finds the benefit of a small-scale utilization with a clear stipulation of strict formality as a reasonable or at least an acceptable compromise. Finally, this article reevaluates and concludes with several concrete suggestions in helping this mechanism's transition in Taiwan's context.