Jones Day Professorship of Commercial Law Lecture 2024

Corporate Governance in an Era of Geoeconomics
 

The “End of History” for corporate law and governance has come to a messy conclusion, marked by U.S.-China rivalry, techno-nationalism, economic sanctions, export controls, supply chain vulnerability, and resulting efforts by multinational enterprises and their governments to “de-risk” in a global environment that has upended many assumptions on which the post-Cold War economic order operated.

This new global environment has ushered in the era of geoeconomics – the pursuit of power politics using economic means. Geoeconomics requires leveraging, curtailing or blocking the actions of profit-oriented commercial enterprises to increase governmental power vis-a-vis geopolitical rivals. It thus places corporations in a role for which they are unaccustomed and organizationally not well suited. As a result, the era of geoeconomics portends significant changes in the corporate governance environment, including the external rules and policies that shape relations among stakeholders, and the internal “operating system” for decision-making and compliance on which corporations run. From board composition and skills to risk analysis, and from compliance to securities listings and information disclosure, the corporate governance environment is being impacted by geopolitical rivalry and the efforts of national governments to contend with, and to influence, the shifting dynamics of the global order. This seminar will explore the evolving landscape of corporate governance in the context of geoeconomics, with a particular focus on U.S. corporations.

For more information, please visit the lecture website.
 

PROGRAMME