Alternative investments, new organizational forms, and corporate governance

This article begins by setting out the rationale for the symposium on alternative finance and governance. New organizational forms of alternative finance provision have grown in importance in recent years, creating opportunities to challenge and extend existing models of corporate governance, which have been focused mainly on large, publicly traded corporations. The article then summarizes the papers in the symposium that relate to crowdfunding, business angel co-investing with other forms of finance, minority private equity investments in family firms, and the performance of private equity funds, before setting out an agenda for further research that relates to other new organizational forms of finance providers notably, accelerators and sovereign wealth funds. This paper emphasizes the need to take account of the variety of goals of the new organizational forms providing alternative finance and the enterprises they fund, such as social enterprises and student entrepreneurship ventures. It points to the need for studies on the real economic impact of the new forms of alternative finance provision.