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The purpose of this paper is to compare the response in the UK, the USA and China to the need to provide effective protection in law to disgruntled minority shareholders.

The study draws upon official comment and case law across the three jurisdictions in order to assess the scope and availability of minority actions.

The importance of shareholder rights through alternative actions is an important aspect of controlling the behaviour and actions of the Board of Directors and an important part of corporate governance. This paper seeks to compare the development and scope of derivative rights in the UK, the USA and in China and provides an assessment and insight into the differences in approach and in the political and legal structures with the consequent likely impact on the role and contribution of derivative claims in the control and governance of Boards in the different jurisdictions.

The study should prove of interest to scholars of comparative corporate law.

Genetic and environmental factors are associated with psychosis risk, but the latter present more tangible markers for prevention. We conducted a theoretical exercise to estimate the proportion of psychotic illnesses that could be prevented if we could identify and remove all factors that lead to increased incidence associated with ethnic minority status and urbanicity. Measures of impact by population density and ethnicity were estimated from incidence rate ratios [IRR] obtained from two methodologically‐similar first episode psychosis studies in four UK centres. Multilevel Poisson regression was used to estimate IRR, controlling for confounders. Population attributable risk fractions [PAR] were estimated for our study population and the population of England. We considered three outcomes; all clinically relevant ICD‐10 psychotic illnesses [F10‐39], non‐affective psychoses [F20‐29] and affective psychoses [F30‐39]. One thousand and twenty‐nine subjects, aged 18‐64, were identified over 2.4 million person‐years. Up to 22% of all psychoses in England (46.9% within our study areas) could be prevented if exposures associated with increased incidence in ethnic minority populations could be removed; this is equivalent to 66.9% within ethnic minority groups themselves. For non‐affective psychoses only, PAR for population density was large and significant (27.5%); joint PAR with ethnicity was 61.7%. Effect sizes for common socio‐environmental risk indicators for psychosis are large; inequalities were marked. This analysis demonstrates potential importance in another light: we need to move beyond current epidemiological approaches to elucidate exact socio‐environmental factors that underpin urbanicity and ethnic minority status as markers of increased risk by incorporating gene‐environment interactions that adopt a multi disciplinary perspective.