Sustainable Finance Roundtable

UCL Centre for Ethics and Law is presenting an evening of topical discussion at our Sustainable Finance Roundtable, 8 Nov 2018 at the Gideon Schreier Lecture Theatre, UCL Faculty of Laws, Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens, London.

The Roundtable will discuss issues relating to the extent to which sustainable finance is niche or more generally marketable, the gaps in sustainable finance, the compatibility between sustainable outcomes and financial performance for investors, the High Level Group’s proposals to the European Commission on accelerating the market for sustainable finance through law and regulatory reforms and other topical issues.

Our Roundtable speakers include:

• Professor Kern Alexander (ETH Zurich)
• Professor Iris Chiu (University College London)
• Dr Irene-marie Esser (University of Glasgow)
• Professor Catherine Malecki (University of Rennes II)
• Professor Iain MacNeil (University of Glasgow)
• Mr David Rouch (Freshfields)
• Professor Henry Schäfer (University of Stuttgart)
• Professor Bert Scholtens (University of Groningen and St Andrew’s University)
• Dr Javier Solana (University of Glasgow)

Keynote Address: Professor Steven Schwarcz, Stanley A Star Professor of Law and Business, Duke University 

About the Speakers

Kern Alexander is Professor of Banking Regulation at the University of Zurich and is a Senior Research Fellow in Financial Regulation at the Centre for Risk Studies, Cambridge Judge Business School. He has authored two recent reports for the United Nations and the G20 on ‘Banking Regulation and Environmental Sustainability’ and ‘Green Banking’. He has given oral and written evidence on many occasions to the House of Commons Treasury Committee and to the House of Lords Committee on Economic Affairs on UK banking regulation, EU banking regulation and economic sanctions.

Iris H.-Y. Chiu is Professor of Corporate Law and Financial Regulation at the Faculty of Laws, University College London, UK. She has published on directors’ duties, shareholder stewardship and corporate governance, as well as regulatory theories and governance in the financial sector. She is Executive Editor of the European Business Law Review and Co-Series Editor of the Palgrave Macmillan Corporate and Financial Law Series. Iris is also Director of the UCL Centre for Ethics and Law.

Irene-marié Esser is a Senior Lecturer in Commercial Law at the University of Glasgow, a Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa and a Visiting Professor at the Open University, UK.  Irene-marié acted as an external advisor to the South African King IV Report on Corporate Governance. She is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. Irene-marié currently teaches Corporate Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility and Company Law and supervises postgraduate research students in South Africa and the United Kingdom. See: http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/law/staff/irene-marieesser/.

Iain MacNeil is the Alexander Stone Chair of Commercial Law and Head of the School of Law at the University of Glasgow. Iain’s early career was in the investment sector in the City of London during the 1980s. His primary interest and expertise lies in corporate governance and financial regulation. In 2012 Iain served as a special adviser to the House of Lords EU Committee. He served as a member of the UK Research Evaluation Framework (REF) Panel for Law in 2014 and has been appointed to the 2021Panel. He is currently Senior Adviser on a DG FISMA commissioned project examining national compliance with EU financial sector Directives. 

Catherine Malecki is a Professor of Private Law and a member of the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Innovations Sociétales (LiRIS), Rennes 2 University, France, an Associate Member of the Institut Droit Ethique Patrimoine, Paris-Saclay University, France, and an External Member of the Institute of Commercial and Corporate Law, Durham Law School, Durham University, UK. She has published on Corporate governance, Corporate Social Responsibility, Socially Responsible Investment, Climate finance.

David Rouch is a partner in the Freshfields financial services regulatory practice. He works with the full range of financial market participants on both their advisory and transactional matters and is reguarly consulted on aspects of the UK and international regulatory reform agenda and on Brexit. He was involved in preparing the ‘Freshfields Report’ for the UN on fiduciary duties in investment management and most recently has been advising the EU Commission High Level Expert Group on sustainable finance on part of their mandate. He is also known for his work on governance and culture in the financial markets, and has contributed a chapter on the Social License of Financial Markets to the Research Handbook in Law and Ethics in Banking and Finance due to be published by Edward Elgar later this year.

Henry Schaefer is Professor of Corporate Finance at the Institute of Business Administration, University of Stuttgart. He has written extensively in the areas of Corporate Risk Management, Sustainability & Finance, and Corporate Social Responsibility. He advises banks and official institutions in impact investing and SRI, as well as in business and product modelling with respect to sustainability. He prepared the foundation of the Sustainable Finance Cluster Germany.

Bert Scholtens is Professor of Banking and Finance at the University of St Andrews School of Management. He also holds the position of Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. His research is directed at international financial intermediation and environmental finance and economics. He focuses on finance, responsible investment and energy and publishes in international academic journals.

Steven Schwarcz is the Stanley A. Star Professor of Law & Business at Duke University and Founding Director of Duke’s interdisciplinary Global Capital Markets Center (now renamed the Global Financial Markets Center). His areas of research and scholarship include insolvency and bankruptcy law, international finance, capital markets, systemic risk, corporate governance, and commercial law. (Links to his scholarship are at http://law.duke.edu/fac/schwarcz/) Professor Schwarcz has been the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, Visiting Professor at the University of Geneva Faculty of Law, Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, Senior Fellow at The University of Melbourne Law School, Visiting Fellow at Ludwig-Maximillians-Universitat Munchen (LMU) Center for Advanced Studies, Guest Professor at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Distinguished Visiting Professor at University College London (UCL) Faculty of Laws (scheduled for Spring 2018), the MacCormick Fellow at The University of Edinburgh School of Law (scheduled for May-June 2019), and an adviser to the United Nations. He has given numerous endowed or distinguished public lectures, including at The University of Hong Kong, the University of Oxford (the Leverhulme Lectures 2010, available at http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/published/leverhulme2010.php), Georgetown University Law Center, National University of Singapore, University of Florence, Leiden University, and the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea.

Javier Solana is a Lecturer in Commercial Law at the University of Glasgow. He is interested in the role that law can play in promoting sustainable finance and in financial regulation more broadly. He holds a B.A. in Business Administration from Carlos III University of Madrid, and law degrees from Carlos III University of Madrid (LLB, MPhil), Harvard Law School (LLM), and the University of Oxford (DPhil).

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