Program on Corporate Governance

The European Corporate Governance Institute awarded its 2019 prize for best working paper in law to a paper by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84.

During his nearly 10 years on the Harvard Law faculty, Holger Spamann S.J.D. ’09 has always enjoyed teaching corporate finance, but he’s also found it challenging. Some students have worked as traders at hedge funds or in private equity and others have been newly minted English majors who haven’t thought much about business concepts. The solution he has been exploring this year is a corporate finance course divided into four different modules, any of which students can opt out of depending on their knowledge level.

The Corporate Practice Commentator recently announced the list of the Ten Best Corporate and Securities Articles selected by an annual poll of corporate and securities law academics. The list includes scholarship by Harvard Law Professor Guhan Subramanian J.D./M.B.A. ’98 and several HLS alums.

Statistics released by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) indicate that, as of the end of 2017, Harvard Law School faculty members have continued to feature prominently on SSRN’s list of the 100 most-cited law professors.

Harvard Law Professor John F. Coates has been named a fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI).

The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation blog has been serving as a forum for exchange of ideas and debate among lawyers, executives, institutional investors, academics and regulators for the past 10 years.

Holger Spamann L.L.M. '01 S.J.D. '09, an expert in corporate governance and finance, has been appointed as a tenured professor of law at Harvard Law School.

The Corporate Practice Commentator recently announced the list of the Ten Best Corporate and Securities Articles selected by an annual poll of corporate and securities law academics. The list includes three articles from Harvard Law faculty associated with the Program on Corporate Governance, Professors Lucian Bebchuk, John Coates, and Jesse Fried.

Corporate governance scholars at Harvard Law keep putting up great numbers.

As of May 2015, more than 300 research studies have applied the Entrenchment Index put forward in the study What Matters in Corporate Governance?, published by Harvard Law faculty members Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen and Allen Ferrell.

For the growing number of empiricists at HLS, there’s nothing quite so satisfying—or unimpeachable—as resolving a thorny, often contentious, legal or policy question through rigorous analysis of cold, hard data.

Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. '80 S.J.D. '84 published an op-ed in the New York Times' DealBook on Aug. 15 entitled, “Don’t Discourage Outside Shareholders.”  The op-ed is in response to a proposed rule being considered by the Securities and Exchange Commission that narrows the timeframe in which shareholders must disclose when they hold five percent or more of a company’s holdings. 

An article by Harvard Law School S.J.D. candidate Andrew Tuch has been voted by the nation’s corporate and securities law professors as one of the top ten corporate and securities law papers of 2011. The article, “Multiple Gatekeepers,” was originally published in the Virginia Law Review.

In an online forum, Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk engaged in a debate with Ohio State University Professor Rene Stulz regarding the role executive compensations played in the financial crisis.

On Feb. 15, Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection at a hearing entitled “Pay for Performance: Incentive Compensation at Large Financial Institutions.”

Whether owners of limited liability companies should be subject to personal liability has been the subject of much controversy lately, in the U.S. and around the world. On Jan. 25, Bruno Salama, spoke to an HLS audience on the topic in the context of his research project and book “The End of Limited Liability in Brazil” tracing the status of corporate limited liability and veil piercing in Brazil. A professor of law at the Fundação Getulio Vargas in Sao Paulo, Salama was joined by HLS Professors Reinier Kraakman and Mark Roe ’75 at an event organized by the Harvard Law School Brazilian Studies Association.

For the last several years, former Harvard Law School Dean Robert C. Clark ’72 has broken with tradition in teaching his mergers and acquisitions course. It isn’t enough to read leading cases, he realized; students still may leave the classroom without any real understanding of how to structure a deal, identify and avoid pitfalls, and recognize why personalities matter—in short, how M&As work in the real world.

At the 2011 annual meeting of the International Corporate Governance Network held in Paris, Professor Lucian Bebchuk was awarded an ICGN award for excellence in corporate governance. ICGN awards are given annually in recognition of “exceptional achievements in the corporate governance field.”

In its recent annual meeting held in San Diego, the Western Economic Association International elected Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk to be its president-elect during 2011-2012.

Holger Spamann L.L.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’09, an expert in corporate governance and finance, will join the Harvard Law School faculty in July as an Assistant Professor of Law.

Shareholders could reduce the toxicity of corporate boards’ use of a “poison pill”—a device designed to block shareholders from considering a takeover bid—if they could replace board majorities more quickly, writes Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84 in an op-ed that appeared in the Feb. 24, 2011, edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Two years after the government bailout of Bear Stearns set off the first shock wave, the Bulletin interviewed HLS faculty and alumni on what went wrong, on where the greatest dangers remain in our financial system and what to do about them.

The op-ed, “Bankers had cashed in before the music stopped,” was co-written by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, Visiting Professor Alma Cohen, and Lecturer on Law Holger Spamann S.J.D. ’09. It appeared in the December 7, 2009, edition of the Financial Times.

A year after the United States government allowed the investment bank Lehman Brothers to fail but then bailed out AIG, and after governments around the world bailed out many other banks, key question remains: when and how should authorities rescue financial institutions?

This op-ed co-written by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84 and Holger Spamann, “Reducing incentives for risk-taking,” appeared in the October 12, 2009, edition of the New York Times. Bebchuk is a professor of law, economics and finance and director of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, and Spamann is co-executive director and a fellow of the HLS corporate governance program. Their op-ed builds on their joint paper, “Regulating Bankers’ Pay.”

The op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, entitled “Unblocking corporate governance reform,” appeared in Project Syndicate. This op-ed is the most recent installment of Bebchuk’s commentary, which he offers monthly in a series of columns entitled “The rules of the game.”

The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’81 S.J.D. ’84, “Bonus guarantees can fuel risky moves,” appeared in the August 27, 2009 edition of The Wall Street Journal. He is the director of the Program on Corporate Governance at HLS.

Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, director of HLS’s Program on Corporate Governance wrote “Let the Good Times Roll Again?” for his July column for Project Syndicate, an international association of 425 newspapers in 150 countries. His recent article draws on his testimony before the Financial Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, and his white papers “Equity Compensation for Long-Term Performance” and “Regulating Bankers’ Pay.”

The visionaries who supported these programs can already see results Credit: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images The impact of Harvard research programs extends well beyond Cambridge.

One of the main goals of the recently established Program on Corporate Governance is to strengthen ties between academia—especially HLS—and the worlds of practice and policy-making.

An HLS professor is "the Elvis Presley of shareholder activism." And one of his fans is a key player in China.

The HLS Program on Corporate Governance released a new study today called Lucky Directors, by Professor Lucian Bebchuk and co-authors Yaniv Grinsten and Urs Peyer suggesting that outside directors' options, and not only executives' options, have been favorably timed to an extent that cannot be explained by mere luck.

The HLS Program on Corporate Governance recently released a study by Professor Lucian Bebchuk and co-authors Yaniv Grinsten and Urs Peyer, which examined the use of stock option backdating.

On Friday, Novemeber 4, The Program on Corporate Governance at HLS will host a panel discussion to debate personal liability for corporate directors. This question became a central one in the recent WorldCom and Enron cases, in which directors paid settlement fees out of their own pockets. Panelists will consider whether personal liability makes directors accountable, or whether it could deter directors from serving and make serving directors excessively defensive.