Distinguished Visitor Lecture: The New Corporate Law of Corporate Groups
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- Distinguished Visitor Lecture: The New Corporate Law of Corporate Groups
January
15
Wednesday
Speaker: | Professor Mariana Pargendler Beneficial Professor of Law Harvard Law School |
Moderator: | Professor Tan Cheng Han NUS Law |
Time: | 6:00 pm to 7:15 pm (SGT) |
Venue: | Wee Chong Jin Moot Court (Block B, Level 1) NUS Bukit Timah Campus 469 Bukit Timah Road |
Type of Participation: | Open To Public |
Description
“The New Corporate Law of Corporate Groups” explores how corporate law treats legal entity boundaries in groups of companies. This study reveals an overlooked global development that has accelerated in the 21st century. Corporate law rules of internal governance increasingly overcome entity boundaries and apply on a pass-through basis, such as by allowing shareholders of a parent company to sue subsidiary directors, inspect subsidiary books and records, and approve significant asset sales by subsidiaries. However, the adoption of entity transparency varies across jurisdictions, leading to unnoticed gaps in investor protection. Notably, there is little correlation between a jurisdiction’s willingness to bypass entity boundaries for shareholder rights and imposing shareholder liability for the benefit of creditors. The lecture delves into the economic rationale for the distinct treatment of entity boundaries with respect to shareholders and creditors, as well as the broader theoretical and normative implications. It highlights the need to deconstruct various dimensions of corporate separateness and challenges the notion that overcoming such separateness invariably
requires exceptional circumstances—conclusions that hold significance for other areas of law.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Mariana Pargendler is the Beneficial Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Her scholarship focuses on corporate law, corporate governance, and contract law from economic and comparative perspectives. She has published over 30 articles in various journals and edited volumes, including the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the American Journal of Comparative Law, among others. She is also a coauthor of The Anatomy of Corporate Law: A Comparative and Functional Approach (Oxford University Press, 2017), a leading academic treatise on comparative corporate law.
Before joining Harvard Law School, Professor Pargendler served as Professor of Law at FGV Law School in São Paulo, Brazil, where she also directed the Center for Law, Economics, and Governance. She has served as a Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia, Penn, Stanford, and Yale, and has taught as Global Professor of Law at NYU’s Buenos Aires program.
Professor Pargendler holds LL.M. and J.S.D. degrees from Yale Law School, as well as LL.B. and PhD degrees from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). Prior to entering academia, she practiced in the areas of corporate governance and M&A in the New York office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP.
Fees Applicable
Complimentary
CPD Points

1
Practice Area: Corporate/Commercial
Training Level: Foundation
Participants who wish to obtain CPD Points are reminded that they must comply strictly with the Attendance Policy set out in the CPD Guidelines. For this activity, this includes signing in on arrival and signing out at the conclusion of the activity in the manner required by the organiser, and not being absent from the entire activity for more than 15 minutes. Participants who do not comply with the Attendance Policy will not be able to obtain CPD Points for attending the activity. Please refer to www.sileCPDcentre.sg for more information.