Live stream | Reconciling Shareholder Primacy and the Interests of People and Planet

UCL Centre for Ethics and Law Live Stream Webinar
Reconciling Shareholder Primacy and the Interests of People and Planet

About this event

Can we achieve greater convergence between corporate actions and the interests of people and planet, especially given cases such as the UK Supreme Court’s decision in BTI v Sequana and its strong reaffirmation of shareholder primacy in the law of directors’ duties? This event will discuss how general company law duties of directors and sustainability-related regulatory requirements can play a complementary role in accelerating such closer convergence between corporate actions and the interests of people and planet. Professor Eilís Ferran and Dr Pedro Schilling de Carvalho will discuss how regulatory initiatives that work within the existing pro-shareholder company law framework can contribute to achieving this objective. They will discuss how regulatory requirements interact with directors’ duties to define the perimeters of lawful corporate activity and the role of regulation as a driver for learning and increased accountability, including via the implementation of more sophisticated risk management approaches. The event will also explore how private and public enforcement can contribute to increasing such complementarity between regulatory requirements and company law. Following a short presentation, Professor Eva Micheler will act as a discussant.

The link to the paper can be found here.

Speakers: Prof Eilís Ferran (University of Cambridge), Dr Pedro Schilling de Carvalho (UCL Laws)

Discussant: Prof Eva Micheler (LSE)

Chair: Dr Anna Donovan (UCL Laws)

About the Speakes

Professor Eilís Ferran

Professor Eilís Ferran, FBA PhD is Professor of Company & Securities Law at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and an Emeritus Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. She is also the Provost of the Gates-Cambridge Trust, which provides scholarships for postgraduate study at Cambridge funded by a major donation from the Gates Foundation.

In her research, Eilís has written extensively on UK, EU and international financial regulation, company law and corporate finance law.  Her publications include Brexit and Financial Services (Hart Publishing, 2017 co-authored), The Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation (OUP, 2015, co-edited) and The Regulatory Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (CUP 2012, co-authored). Eilis founded the University of Cambridge LLM Corporate Finance law paper and has taught on it over many years.  With co-authors Elizabeth Howell (London School of Economics) and Felix Steffek (Cambridge), she has recently completed a new edition of the textbook Principles of Corporate Finance Law (OUP, 2023). Eilis has advised UK Parliamentary committees and served as an academic member of the Stakeholder Group of the European Banking Authority.

Eilís is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple. She is an independent non-executive director of Euroclear Holding SA/NV and Euroclear SA/NV, and is the Chair of the Group Nomination and Governance Committee.  She is also a non-executive director of the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge.

Dr Pedro Schilling de Carvalho

Dr Pedro Schilling de Carvalho is a Lecturer in Financial and Environmental Law at UCL Faculty of Laws. Prior to joining UCL, Pedro has taught and worked at the University of Cambridge, London School of Economics, University of Edinburgh, and University of São Paulo.

Pedro has broad research interests in financial regulation, corporate finance, environmental law, international economic law, and international development, with a particular focus on emerging areas such as sustainable finance, digital financial services, and blended finance.

Pedro has experience providing legal and policy advice to organisations such as the Green Climate Fund, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He also works on operations and advisory projects at the Legal Vice Presidency of The World Bank Group, where he contributed to flagship products such as the B-READY Report (successor to the Doing Business series), Country Climate and Development Reports, and is a certified peer-reviewer by the Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions Global Practice.

He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge (PhD, LLM) and from the University of São Paulo (LLB) and was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School and at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg.

About the Chair

Dr Anna Donovan

Anna is an Associate Professor in Corporate Law and the Director of the UCL Centre for Ethics and Law.  Her research sits at the intersection of corporate law and behaviour, exploring how institutional rules shape human decision making – often in unintended ways.  Anna's work has been applied across legal fields including business ethics, compliance, corruption and technology.  Her monograph, Reconceptualising Corporate Compliance, Responsibility, Freedom and the Law, was joint runner up for the Peter Birks prize for outstanding legal scholarship.  Prior to academia, Anna was a corporate lawyer in the City.  She is also admitted as an attorney in New York.

About the discussant

Professor Eva Micheler

Professor Micheler is a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and a member of the management committee of the Systemic Risk Centre at LSE. Professor Micheler’s recent monograph, Company Law: A Real Entity Theory (OUP, 2021) advances a real entity theory of company law, in which the company is a legal entity which acts autonomously in law, and company law establishes procedures facilitating autonomous organisational decision-making. Professor Micheler was a TMR fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Oxford and teaches regularly at the University of Vienna and the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg.

About the Centre

The UCL Centre for Ethics and Law brings together leading academics, practitioners and policy makers to support cutting edge and interdisciplinary research at the intersection of ethics and law. Subscribe to receive updates on the centre and similar events.

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