The research by the members of the corporate and financial law group has been picked up by numerous media outlets and NGOs and cited by courts. Members also routinely engage in policy work by advising governments, central banks, international organisations, and the EU institutions. In particular, they regularly give testimony and make submissions to inquiries of the UK Parliament, Law Commissions, the EU Parliament and Commission and others.
Here are some recent examples of our impact and public engagement:
Professor Jo Braithwaite and Dr David Murphy run the ‘Future of Financial Markets Infrastructure’ project and events routinely host policymakers from around the world, for example recently the CFTC Commissioner, Kristin N Johnson with respect to examining the regulation of financial market infrastructure in the fintech era. Dr Suren Gomstian was cited in the Financial Times, by the United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit), and by the Delaware Court of Chancery. Dr Alperen Gözlügöl was cited in the Wall Street Journal and engaged with Net-Zero Tracker (an NGO on climate action) with respect to his research findings on private companies and climate change. Dr Elizabeth Howell was (until Brexit) a member of the European Securities and Markets Authority’s Consultative Working Group on Corporate Finance. Dr Howell met with the Financial Conduct Authority concerning its review of the short selling regime. Professor David Kershaw advised the Big Innovation Society on the company law aspects of its Purposeful Company Project, and together with Professor Julia Black, provided a written submission and gave evidence before the Parliamentary Committee on Banking Standards. Professor Eva Micheler is an expert on FinTech and the application of distributed ledger technologies in financial markets. She was a co-investigator of the UK EPSRC project 'Blockchain Technology for Algorithmic Regulation and Compliance' which studied the usefulness of blockchain/distributed ledger technology for financial services regulation. She is a member of the Investor Protection and Intermediaries Standing Committee at the European Securities and Markets Authority and was a member of the steering group at the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills regarding a project exploring the intermediated shareholding model. Professor Micheler’s work was cited by the Supreme Court. Professor Niamh Moloney serves as an independent non-executive director of the board of the Central Bank of Ireland and as a member of the Board of Appeal of the European Supervisory Authorities. She was Chair of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare, established by the government of Ireland in 2021 to review the state’s taxation and welfare systems, which reported in 2022 (Foundations for the Future). Dr Philipp Paech has been appointed member of the joint project of UNIDROIT and the Hague Conference on Private International Law on cross-border holdings and transactions of digital assets and tokens. Dr Paech also served as a chair of the EU Commission’s expert group on regulatory obstacles to financial innovation 2017-2019. The Group’s ‘30 Recommendations on Regulation, Innovation and Finance’ were published by DG FISMA in December 2019 and subsequently became one of the foundational documents for the EU Digital Finance Strategy, on the basis of which several EU instruments (MiCA, DORA, Pilot Regime, AI Act, DMA, etc) were developed and enacted. Professor Sarah Paterson’s work has been cited in the Court of Appeal and the High Court in various cases, including In re AGPS Bondco Plc [2024] EWCA Civ 24 at [161]; Houst Limited [2022] EWHC 1941 (Ch) at [30] referred to in AGPS Bondco at [158]; Great Annual Savings Co Ltd [2023] EWHC 1141 (Ch) at [104] and [133] - [135] and Re Virgin Active Holdings Limited [2021] EWHC 1246 (Ch) at [149].