Last week, 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.”
During the awards ceremony, Richard Bennett, chair of the ICGN awards committee, said Bebchuk was honored for the volume and quality of his research, particularly around executive compensation and the relationship of governance to value and firm performance. Bebchuk’s more than two decades of research has provided “a base of integrity and learning for scholars, policy makers, and legislators,” said Bennett. In his remarks, Bennett read from a letter submitted by Robert A.G. Monks, a shareholder activist and corporate governance pioneer, which praised Bebchuk as “the epitome of honest, painstaking, unprejudiced analysis; he is in truth an academic icon” and said that “all of us are in his debt.”
“It is fantastic to see our extraordinary colleague Lucian honored with what is the Nobel Prize in the vital field of corporate governance that he has done so much to shape,” said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow. “His rigorous and far-reaching research has repeatedly advanced the field and challenged reforms in theory and in practice; and his leadership through the Program on Corporate Governance ensures a forum for vigorous and full debate and exchange of information and ideas.”
Bebchuk is the William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance and the co-author with HLS Professor Jesse Fried of “Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation” (Harvard University Press 2004).
The ICGN is a global membership organization of over 500 leaders in corporate governance based in 50 countries.