Professor Eva Micheler delivers Jernal Singh Khosa Professorial Lecture

On 19 August 2025, Professor Eva Micheler delivered a lecture titled “Institutional Theory for Corporate Law” at the Wee Chong Jin Moot Court on the Bukit Timah campus.

Reliance on agency-theoretic reasoning has led to substantial theoretical and empirical advances in company law scholarship, but the narrow focus on board-level actors and phenomena has disconnected the analysis of the company from the reality of the economic organisation it is meant to enable and support.

In the lecture, Professor Micheler followed economist Oliver Williamson’s call for a “law, economics, and organisation” approach, and built on political scientist Elinor Ostrom’s ”institutional analysis and development” framework to propose a narrative model of the company in terms of nested levels of governance.

She argued that such a model works as a positive description of the law as it is, and puts us in a stronger position to evaluate the likely consequences of certain normative interventions, which was illustrated with observations about ongoing debates in corporate governance.

Professor Micheler delivered this lecture in her capacity as the Visiting Jernal Singh Khosa Professor, while the search for a permanent appointment to the Jernal Singh Khosa Chair is ongoing. The professorship was established in memory of Mr Jernal Singh Khosa (1932-1988) by his wife, Mrs Sarjit Singh Khosa, and celebrates his love for the law and his strong sense of justice, which compelled him to pursue what he believed was right. He was a litigator in Singapore who handled a wide range of disputes, gaining the respect of fellow lawyers and other members of the legal profession on the strength of his reputation.

A community champion in her own right, Mrs Sarjit Singh Khosa has served as Vice President of the Singapore Khalsa Association Ladies Wing, is a member of the Sikh Welfare Council of Singapore’s (SIWEC) Management Committee, and a volunteer leader of its active ageing programmes.

About Professor Eva Micheler

A scholar of exceptional calibre, Professor Micheler brings deep expertise in corporate and financial law. She is a full professor at LSE Law School, teaching corporate governance, corporate finance law and company law. Her research focuses on corporate law theory and securities digitisation.

Her groundbreaking work on dematerialisation, intermediated securities and crypto-assets has consistently led the field. Her book, Company Law – A Real Entity Theory (OUP 2021), blends doctrinal scholarship with organisational studies, earning international acclaim.

She frequently advises policymakers, and is currently participating in the LSE Systemic Risk Centre and ICAEW’s digital assets regulation working group. Previously, she served on the European Commission’s Expert Group on Corporate Governance and ESMA’s Investor Protection Committee.

Her academic work has been cited by the UK Supreme Court, Australian High Court and Austrian Supreme Court. She regularly organises and speaks at international conferences, maintaining a rich network of legal, finance and social science collaborators. She is a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute.