대주식회사법 의 구축과 기업지배구조

The Making of Large Corporation Law and The Corporate Governance- Referring to the Japanese New Corporation Law -

우리나라의 경우 대규모.공개회사에 대해서는 그 실체에 걸맞은 구분입법과 규제분화의 필요성이 강력히 제기되고 있으며, 이들에 대한 법적규제를 임기응변식의 특별법이나 하위의 규칙, 기준 등으로 대응하기에는 이미 그 한계에 봉착해 있다. 또한 각종 회사기업 중 주식회사가 95% 이상을 차지하고 있으며, 그 중에서 주식회사다운 주식회사의 전형이라고 할 수 있는 상장회사는 0.5% 미만이다. 따라서 주식회사의 대부분은 입법자가 원래 이상적 형태로서 구상하였던 대규모의 기업도 공개기업도 아닌, 말하자면 그 실체는 소규모의 영세기업이며, 동족 내지는 혈족에 의해 운영되는 개인기업에 지나지 않는다. 이러한 현상은 비교법적 관점에서 보아도 매우 이례적이며, 실제 이에 따른 폐해도 다방면에 걸쳐 나타나고 있다. 이 논문에서는 위와 같은 문제의식을 토대로 하여 대규모․공개주식회사와 중소규모의 폐쇄주식회사는 그 실체에 있어서 뿐만 아니라 운영상의 경제적 기능에 있어서도 본질적으로 다르다는 점에 착안하여, 대소회사구분입법 및 규제분화가 선행되어야 할 필요성을 강조하는 한편, 유한회사를 포함한 중소규모의 폐쇄주식회사에 적용될 이른바 중소주식회사통합법 과는 별도로 일본의 최근 입법 동향, 특히 신회사법을 참고로 하여 대규모.공개주식회사에 적용될 대주식회사법 의 구축을 시도하고, 기업지배구조와 관련된 각종 특별법 등의 수용방안과 대주식회사법 의 기본체제를 구상해 보았다.

Regulations upon large open corporations should be adopted into the system of the Corporate Law, In Korea, though, they have been, as temporary expeditious measures in order to settle problems of those time and to cope with social changes, adopted into various special laws such as the Securities Exchange Act and the External Audits Law as well as various rules derived from them. It can be said that the dual regulatory practices have severely confused corporate interests, and the compulsory provisions in the Corporate Law have been either abrogated or violated by such special laws and their abusive revisions. As a result of those, the Corporate Law has been losing the original functions of the basic corporate laws and eventually jeopardizing its unconstitutionality. Considering these problems, there is a general agreement among scholars and in business world in Korea that corporate regulations have come to the point where those special laws and rules as expedient measures lost their impacts and there have been debates on the necessity to legislate for the separation between large and small corporations. Among the system of companies that are regulated by the Corporate Law, stock companies count more than 95% in korea, but the number of listed companies are only about 730 companies. And so, most of stock companies are not large nor open companies, and they are just operated by family members. From the point of comparative legal system, this present situation is quite abnormal, producing various problems in many areas. If small and closed companies are regulated uniformly and continuously by strict and complex regulations aimed at large and open companies, they might consciously or unconsciously try to completely evade regulations by the corporate laws. As the Corporate Law are not able to reflect the realities of corporate world, their authority as the basic laws of corporate world, will be reduced, if not completely lost. With the above understanding, this paper argues that there are differences between large and open corporations and small and closed corporations in terms of the economic functions in their operations as well as their nature, and it is an imperative to separate regulatory laws into ones which are directed towards large and open corporations and ones which are directed towards small and closed corporations. Further, this paper try to construct ‘the Large Corporations Act’ as special law, and finally present specific details for new corporate governance system in large and open corporations.