Faculty Profile

Dan W. Puchniak is the Yong Pung How Professor of Law at the Yong Pung How School of Law (YPHSL), Singapore Management University, where he is Director of the Centre for Commercial Law in Asia and Inaugural Director of the Asian Corporate Law Forum. He is a Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and a founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge Forum on Corporate Climate Governance. 

A scholar who pioneered intra-Asian comparative corporate law and governance, Dan received the 2023 ECGI Cleary Gottlieb Law Prize – the leading annual prize in corporate law scholarship – and the 2025 YPHSL Most Outstanding Legal Studies Teacher Award. His research has been profiled in The Economist, cited by Singapore’s apex court, and published in leading law journals and university presses. He has held numerous visiting positions, including at Oxford, Stanford, Columbia, Chicago, Tokyo, Seoul National, and Melbourne, with recent invited lectures on Asian corporate law and governance at Harvard Law School and UPenn Carey Law. He undertakes high-stakes expert and advisory work across Asia. 

Prior to joining SMU, he was tenured at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law, where he directed the Centre for Asian Legal Studies and was Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Journal of Comparative Law. Next year, he will return to Columbia, Stanford, and Tokyo as a visiting professor.
 

Qualifications

• LLD, Kyushu University, Japan
• LLM, Kyushu University, Japan
• LLB, University of Victoria, Canada
• BA, University of Manitoba, Canada
• Barrister & Solicitor (Ontario)

Courses Taught

• LAW494 Comparative Corporate Governance
• LAW662 Comparative Corporate Law and Governance in Asia
• LGST201 Company Law
• LAW701 PhD Research Methods Workshop

Research Areas / Areas of Specialisation

• Comparative Corporate Law and Governance
• Corporate Law and Governance in Asia
• Singapore Corporate Law and Governance
• Japanese Corporate Law and Governance
• Asian and Comparative Law