Swedish House of Finance to host the Global Corporate Governance Colloquia in 2016

Sep. 05, 2015

The first Global Corporate Governance Colloquia, GCGC, was held at Stanford in June 2015 and Professor Mike Burkart and Professor Bo Becker were there to represent the Swedish House of Finance.

– Having been invited to join the GCGC initiative as one of four European universities is evidence that we are a leading European environment for corporate governance research. Participation in these Colloquia will help to ensure that the Swedish House of Finance stays at the research forefront and shapes the research agenda and policy in the corporate governance area. Given the intense international policy debates in the corporate governance field, not the least within the European Union, it is also beneficial that Sweden gets an opportunity to influence this policy debate, says Mike Burkart.

The GCGC was initiated in Oxford in 2012 by a number of scholars affiliated with the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). A network of 12 major universities in the US, Far East, and Europe formed the GCGC whose purpose is to organize a series of annual world-class conferences on corporate governance research. The participating universities are Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Beijing University, Tokyo University, Seoul National University, National University of Singapore, London Business School, Oxford University, Frankfurt House of Finance, and the Swedish House of Finance.

– Fourteen papers were presented during the inaugural conference in Stanford, each followed by an assigned commentator and a lively plenary discussion. The papers covered a wide range of topics, reflecting the diversity of current corporate governance research undertaken not only by financial economists but also by researchers in law, management, and accounting. Some papers addressed highly topical issues, such as, the role of activist hedge funds or the impact of board gender quota in Norway, says Mike Burkart.

The 2016 GCGC will be held at the Stockholm School of Economics on June 10 – 11. Currently, the program committee under the chairmanship of Mike Burkart is working on putting together an equally exciting program. So far, a number of highly prominent scholar have already agreed to come to Stockholm and present their work, including Bernard Black, Northwestern University Law School, Guido Ferrarini, University of Genoa, Oliver Hart, Harvard, Martin Hellwig, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Steven Kaplan, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Marco Pagano, Università di Napoli Federico II, and Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

The expectations are that the 2016 GCGC conference will be a high-profile event.