Company Law, Corporate Governance and the Banking Crisis

UCL Centre for Commercial Law seminar:
Company Law, Corporate Governance and the Banking Crisis

16 October, 2.30 - 4.30pm
at UCL Central Campus (Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre)

Panel of Experts:

• Chair, Professor Edward Walker-Arnott
  (Honorary Visiting Professor at UCL and former senior partner of Herbert Smith)
• Professor Philip Rawlings
  (Professor of the Law at UCL);
• Professor John Lowry
  (Professor of the Law at UCL and Vice-Dean)
• Dr. Arad Reisberg
  (Reader in Corporate and Financial Law and Vice Dean)
• Dr Roger Barker
  (Head of Corporate Governance at the Institute of Directors); 
• Cliff Weight
  (co-founder of the executive pay consultancy Independent Remuneration Solutions, now part of MM&K);, 
• Dr Iris Chiu
  (Senior Lecturer in Laws at UCL);
• Dr Marc Moore
  (Lecturer in laws at UCL).   

Background
During late 2007 and 2008 five British banks failed and had to be saved by HM Government. Their assets in aggregate well exceeded the United Kingdom's gross domestic product.  All of them to a greater or lesser extent participated in a global financial network. In the result HM Government had to commit vast resources, by way of recapitalisation, funding guarantees, central bank support and asset protection schemes, to save the banks. 

Given that this is, very probably, the greatest financial catastrophe to inflict the United Kingdom it is not surprising that much attention is being paid to the question "what went wrong?" So far there has been a remarkable unanimity in the general reports that have been published: the boards of directors were at fault. In this context, Sir David Walker was asked by the Prime Minister to conduct a review of corporate governance in UK banks and published a report, as a consultation document, on 16th July. The conclusions to Sir David’s review are expected in November of this year.

About the Seminar:
In this special afternoon seminar, scheduled to coincide with the culmination of the Walker Review’s second consultation period, experts from UCL Laws and special invited speakers  will discuss the key corporate governance issues exposed by the banking crisis and advance proposals for future regulatory developments in this area.

Issues which will be explored include:

• the effectiveness of directors’ individual and collective duties as a constraint on irresponsible levels of risk-taking;
• the role of performance remuneration design in both creating and mitigating incentives for excessive risk-taking;
• the effectiveness of civil and administrative sanctions available in respect of breach of directors’ individual responsibilities;
• how the principles of corporate governance bear on the discharge of collective responsibility; and
• the main features of the banking collapses – as they appear from published material – which suggest a need for official investigation