Centre for Asian Legal Studies and EW Barker Centre for Law & Business (EWBCLB) was pleased to organise the conference on the “Comparative Corporate Governance Conference 2018” on 13 & 14 January 2018 at NUS Law.

Below is the list of participants that attended the conference (Alphabetical order by last name):

• Dr Batbold Amarsanaa, University of Mongolia
• Associate Professor Gary Bell, NUS Law
• Associate Professor Stephen Bull, SMU Law
• Assistant Professor Christopher Chen, SMU Law
• Dr Vivien Chen Jean Hui, Monash University
• Professor Nansulhun Choi, Yonsei University
• Associate Professor Kyung Hoon Chun, Seoul National University
• Dr Yetty Komalasari Dewi, University of Indonesia
• Professor Zehra Gulay Kavame Eroglu, Deakin Law School
• Associate Professor Gen Goto, Tokyo University
• Assistant Professor Christian Hofmann , NUS Law
• Associate Professor Pasha Hsieh, SMU Law
• Professor Sang Yop Kang, Peking University School of Transnational Law
• Professor Kon Sik Kim, Seoul National University
• Associate Professor Pearlie Koh, SMU Law
• Mr Alan Koh, NUS Law
• Associate Professor Lan Luh Luh, NUS Law
• Assistant Professor Nilubol Lertnuwat, Thammasat University
• Assistant Professor Lee Pey Woan, SMU Law
• Professor XingXing Li, Jinan University
• Associate Professor Manabu Matsunaka, Nagoya University
• Associate Professor Dan Puchniak, NUS Law
• Professor Holger Spamann, Harvard Law School
• Professor Tan Cheng Han, NUS Law
• Assistant Professor Tan Zhong Xing, NUS Law
• Ms Samantha Tang, NUS Law
• Professor Hans Tjio, NUS Law
• Associate Professor Umakanth Varottil, NUS Law
• Associate Professor Wan Wai Yee, SMU Law
• Associate Professor Wang Jiangyu, NUS Law
• Mr JK Wang, Seoul National University
• Associate Professor Wee Meng Seng, NUS Law
• Professor David Zaring, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
• Assistant Professor Zhang Wei, SMU Law

Over the last three decades, the field of comparative corporate law has evolved from being an obscure backwater of legal scholarship to a prominent field which occupies the minds of many of the world’s leading corporate law scholars. During much of this evolution, the United States dominated the global economy as the world’s sole economic superpower. As a result, many of the foundational comparative corporate law theories-which ostensibly have universal applicability-have been derived from America’s corporate governance experience.
This project aimed to bring together leading comparative corporate law scholars from Asia and the United States to produce cutting-edge scholarship to advance the field of comparative corporate law.

Since the new millennium, the shift in global economic power towards Asia has been extraordinary. Asia’s tiger economies now appear at the top of global rankings in terms of per capita GDP and economic efficiency. China is now poised to overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy-a position the United States has held for over a century. By 2020, three of the world’s four largest economies will be in Asia (China (1), Japan (3) and India (4)).

This meteoric rise of Asian economies has seen the concurrent rise of Asian financial markets and companies. The first decade of the new millennium saw Asian financial markets take centre stage in the global competition for shareholder capital. In 2010, Asian stock exchanges captured 66 percent of the capital raised globally through initial public offerings (IPOs), up from 12 percent in 1999. Indeed, in three years in the past decade, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has attracted fresher shareholder capital than either the New York Stock Exchange or London Stock Exchange, leading the world in capital raised through IPOs. Similarly, Asian companies can now claim to be the most powerful in the world. In 2013, for the first time, there were more Fortune Global 500 Companies in Asia than in either North America or Europe. In fact, there are now twice as many Fortune Global 500 Companies headquartered in Tokyo (47) and Beijing (41) than in New York (18) and London (18). Regardless of whether this century turns out to be ‘Asia’s century’, as many predict, what has already occurred in Asia provides a unique opportunity to evaluate whether the conventional wisdom about corporate governance, which has been derived primarily from America’s corporate governance experience, has universal applicability.

This project hoped to seize this opportunity by bringing together leading comparative corporate law scholars from Asia and the United States to discuss cutting-edge issues in comparative corporate governance.