John Coates
John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics Deputy Dean Research Director, Center on the Legal Profession
John Coates is the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School, where he also serves as Deputy Dean and Research Director of the Center on the Legal Profession. Professor Coates served as General Counsel and as Acting Director for the Division of Corporation Finance for the SEC. Before joining Harvard, he was a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, specializing in financial institutions and M&A. At HLS and at HBS, he teaches corporate governance, M&A, finance, and related topics. He has testified before Congress, advised the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the New York Stock Exchange, and served as the Chair of the Investor-as-Owner Subcommittee of the Investor Advisory Committee of the SEC.
Professor Coates’s most recent publication is The Problem of Twelve: When a Few Financial Institutions Control Everything.
Representative Publications
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Recent Publications
- John C. Coates, Mergers, Acquisitions, and Restructuring Types, Regulation, and Patterns of Practice, in The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Law and Governance (2d ed. 2025).
- John Coates, John C. Coffee, Jr., James D. Cox et al., Shadow SEC Statement No. 2 (March 13, 2025): THE CRISIS DEEPENS AS SEC STAFF AND BUDGET CUTS ARE DIRECTED, The CLS Blue Sky Blog (Mar. 13, 2025).
- Joel Seligman, John Coates, John C. Coffee, Jr. et al., Shadow SEC: The Value of an Independent SEC, The CLS Blue Sky Blog (Feb. 24, 2025).
- John Coates, President Trump’s Second Term and the Rule of Law, in The Economic Consequences Of The Second Trump Administration (forthcoming 2025).