This document contains the response of the Financial Law Institute to the consultation document of the European Commission on Future Priorities for the Action Plan on Modernising Company Law and Enhancing Corporate Governance. It is the fruit of a debate about the direction of European company law within the Financial Law Institute. The consultation document to which this is a response is available at http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/company/consultation/index_en.htm. Two important points we’ve tried to make, among many others, are that a) more transparency is needed about ownership of shares and who can exercise the voting power attached to shares, esp. in view of developments on the capital markets such as stock lending b) the introduction of a mandatory "one share one vote" rule is not supported by the available evidence on the efficiency of such a rule. Such a rule could on the contrary be a strong incentive not to take firms public even where this would be efficient for them.