Online Webinar | Proposal for Code of Conduct for Directors by the Institute of Directors, UK

UCL Centre for Ethics and Law Online Webinar

About this event

In June 2024, the IoD unveiled a Code of Conduct for Directors. This soft law instrument addresses directors’ personal and organisational conduct so that they, as leaders in business, can be encouraged to shape good business culture. The Code is intended to contribute to restoring public trust in business. This webinar introduces the Code in order to engage academic and other stakeholders to consider and respond to the consultation, which closes on 16 August 2024. The consultation details can be found here. The IoD’s presentation at the webinar will be accompanied by academic reflections.

Speakers:

Roger Barker, Director of Corporate Governance and Policy, IoD

Pedro Schilling de Carvalho, Lecturer in Financial and Environmental Law, UCL

Anna Donovan, Associate Professor of Corporate Law, UCL

Joan Loughrey, Professor of Law, Queen’s University Belfast

Eva Micheler, Professor of Law, London School of Economics

Iris H-Y Chiu, Professor of Corporate Law and Financial Regulation, UCL and Director, Centre for Ethics and Law (Chair)

Watch the video directly on our YouTube Channel

About the Speakers

Roger Barker, Director of Corporate Governance and Policy, IoD

Roger is Director of Policy and Corporate Governance at the Institute of Directors, the UK’s oldest professional body for business leaders. Dr. Barker is a well-known speaker on governance issues, and the author/co-author of four books and numerous articles on corporate governance and directorship. Dr. Barker is a former member of the European Economic and Social Committee, and spent almost 15 years in a variety of equity research and senior management roles at UBS and Bank Vontobel, both in the UK and Switzerland. He has a doctorate from Oxford University and taught politics at Merton College, Oxford.

Pedro Schilling de Carvalho, Lecturer in Financial and Environmental Law, UCL

Pedro is a Lecturer in Financial and Environmental Law at UCL Faculty of Laws. Prior to joining UCL, Pedro has taught and worked at the University of Cambridge, London School of Economics, University of Edinburgh, and University of São Paulo. Pedro has broad research interests in financial regulation, corporate finance, corporate governance, international economic law, and international development, with a particular focus on emerging areas such as sustainable finance, digital financial services, and blended finance. Pedro has experience providing legal and policy advice to organisations such as the Green Climate Fund, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He also works on operations and advisory projects at the Legal Vice Presidency of The World Bank Group, where he contributed to flagship products such as the B-READY Report (successor to the Doing Business series), Country Climate and Development Reports, and is a certified peer-reviewer by the Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions Global Practice. He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge (PhD, LLM) and from the University of São Paulo (LLB) and was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School and at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg.

Anna Donovan, Associate Professor of Corporate Law, UCL

Anna is an Associate Professor in Corporate Law.  Her research sits at the intersection of corporate law and behaviour, exploring how institutional rules shape human decision making – often in unintended ways.  Anna's work has been applied across legal fields including business ethics, compliance, corruption and technology.  Her monograph, Reconceptualising Corporate Compliance, Responsibility, Freedom and the Law, was joint runner up for the Peter Birks prize for outstanding legal scholarship. 

Anna is the co-founder of UCL Art Futures, an interdisciplinary research initiative exploring new ways of working, creating and collaborating. She was previously the Vice Dean (Innovation) at the Faculty of Laws and co-director of the UCL Centre for Ethics and Law. She is a member of the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies and a former panel member of LawtechUK.  Prior to academia, Anna was a corporate lawyer in the City.  She is also admitted as an attorney in New York.

Joan Loughrey, Professor of Law, Queen’s University Belfast

Joan is Professor of Law and Head of School at the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast. She joined Queen’s University Belfast in 2022 after eighteen years at the University of Leeds where her roles included Director of the Centre for Business Law and Practice, then Deputy Head of School from 2013, and from January 2020-May 2021 Interim Head of School. 

Joan has interests in corporate law, corporate governance, legal ethics and regulation and her published work focuses on the regulation of directors and enforcement of directors' duties, shareholder litigation, and the regulation of the legal profession, particularly large law firms and their lawyers. She is a member of the Advisory Board of University of Exeter’s Post Office Project, examining the role of lawyers in the Post Office scandal, and an Associate of the Legal Professions Research Group, based at the School of Law, University of Leeds.

Eva Micheler, Professor of Law, London School of Economics

Eva studied law at the University of Vienna and at the University of Oxford before joining LSE Law School in 2001. She is a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics. Professor Micheler is also on the management committee of the Systemic Risk Centre at LSE. She was a TMR fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Oxford and teaches regularly at the University of Vienna and the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg.

About the Chair

Iris H-Y Chiu, Professor of Corporate Law and Financial Regulation, UCL and Director, Centre for Ethics and Law

Iris is Professor of Corporate Law and Financial Regulation at University College London. She is Director of the UCL Centre of Ethics and Law and advances the public and stakeholder engagement of the Centre’s agenda in relation to a wide range of issues in relation to law, regulation, governance and ethics in business and finance. She has published extensively in the areas of corporate governance and financial regulation, including The Foundations and Anatomy of Shareholder Activism (2010), Investment Management and Corporate Governance (2017), The Legal Framework for Internal Control in Banks and Financial Institutions (2015) and Banking Law and Regulation (2019). She has interests in financial regulation and governance, law and technology, corporate law and governance and the law and policy for business and finance generally. She is a Research Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute, and most recently, a Senior Scholar at the European Central Bank’s Legal Research Programme.

About the Centre

UCL's Centre for Ethics and Law promotes and enhances collaboration between corporates, practitioners, civil servants, academics and others around the broad themes of professional ethics and the ethics of risk. Subscribe to receive updates on the centre and similar events.

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