John L. Weinberg Distinguished Speaker Series – The Chancellors: Past and Present
On March 23, 2022, the Weinberg Center hosted “The Chancellors: Past and Present,” which was part of its John L. Weinberg Distinguished Speaker series, and “Delaware Law Update.”
The Center was honored to host “The Chancellors: Past and Present,” which featured the current and three former Chancellors from the Delaware Court of Chancery, and was moderated by Greg Williams form Richards, Layton & Finger. For more information, view the video.
“Delaware Law Update” consisted of two roundtables that focused on recent developments and emerging issues in Delaware law: “Board Oversight Liability Three Years After Marchand –What Has Changed? What Still May Change?” and“Recent Delaware Perspectives on Special Committees and SPACs.”For more information, view the video.
Click herefor more information about “The Chancellors: Past and Present,” including the participants.
Click here for more information about “Delaware Law Update,” including the participants and materials.
The Weinberg Center wants to congratulate the two winners of the 2022 John L. Weinberg/IRRCi Research Paper Award Competition:
Is History Repeating Itself? The (Un)predictable Past of ESG Ratings Florian Berg (MIT), Kornelia Fabisik (Frankfurt), and Zacharias Sautner (Frankfurt)
Bargaining with Private Equity: Implications for Hospital Prices and Patient Welfare Tong Liu (Wharton) Read the paper
These papers were presented, along with the papers of the six other finalists, at the virtual academic portion of the Weinberg Center’s 2022 Corporate Governance Symposium that was held on Friday, March 11, 2022.
Please join us in congratulating the winners and the semi-finalists.
On September 20, 2021, the University of Delaware’s Weinberg Center announced that Justin P. Klein has been named as the new director of the Center. Mr. Klein assumed leadership of the Center on September 20, 2021.
Justin Klein has been a member of the Weinberg Center’s Advisory Board since 2015. He was a partner at Ballard Spahr LLP from 1992 through 2019 and most recently has served as senior counsel at the firm. He has represented public and private companies and their boards and board committees in a variety of transactions, including securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions. He also has advised firms in the securities industry, including broker-dealers and investment banks, and has assisted clients in day-to-day corporate governance and other transactional matters. Before entering private practice, Klein served for nine years at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, holding positions including assistant director of the Division of Corporation Finance. He has been recognized by Chambers USA, receiving its highest ranking in corporate/M&A and securities law (2003-2021) and was named one of the Best Lawyers in America in corporate law, mergers and acquisitions law and securities capital markets law (2006-2021) and Lawyer of the Year in Mergers and Acquisitions Law (Philadelphia/2020). He is a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association and served on the Attorney Advisory Committee of the Pennsylvania Securities Commission. At Ballard Spahr, Mr. Klein was a member of the Elected Board and a member of the firm’s Diversity Council. He is active in community service, having served as board chair and a board member of The Mann Center for the Performing Arts, president of the board of Settlement Music School and board chair at Pomfret School. Klein earned his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and J.D. from George Washington University Law School.
Klein replaces the founding director of the Weinberg Center, Charles Elson, professor of finance and Edgar S. Woolard, Jr. Chair in Corporate Governance, who stepped down from the position in 2020. Lerner’s Department Chair of Finance, Laura Field, Donald J. Puglisi Professor of Finance, served as interim director after Elson’s departure.
A search committee was chaired by Field and included Advisory Board members Carol Ward and Jennifer Voss, and Lerner Professors John D’Arcy, Kati Tackacs Haynes, Jennifer McCloskey, Jeremy Tobacman and Fei Xie. Lerner Center Directors Wendy Smith and Amanda Bullough of the Women’s Leadership Initiative and Carlos Asarta of the Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship also met with candidates during the search and will provide mentorship on leading a collaborative center that showcases scholarship and builds valuable connections among faculty, students and business leaders.
Andre G. Bouchard Named Advisory Board Chair of UD’s Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance
By Jen Hendrickson • October 14, 2021
Former Chancellor Andre G. Bouchard has been named Chair of the Advisory Board of the University of Delaware’s John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. Bouchard succeeds Myron T. Steele, the former Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court and a current partner at Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP.
“Chancellor Bouchard was approved by a unanimous vote of the Weinberg Center Advisory Board Governance committee and his work on the Delaware Court of Chancery is widely regarded,” Steele said. “I am confident that he will continue to lift the profile of the Weinberg Center and provide leadership guidance to its new director Justin Klein.”
Steele has been appointed to the Weinberg Center’s Emeritus Board and will be honored at the Weinberg Center’s 20th Anniversary Celebration Dinner on Oct. 18, 2021.
“Myron T. Steele been an outstanding advocate for the Weinberg Center,” Dean Bruce W. Weber of UD’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics said. “In his two decades of leadership, his ongoing advice and counsel have been critical to the Center’s success.”
The Weinberg Center, founded in 2000 within the Lerner College, is one of the longest-standing corporate governance centers in academia, and the first and only corporate governance center in the State of Delaware. Klein assumed leadership of the Center on Sept. 20, 2021. Its Advisory Board is composed of prominent thought leaders and practitioners in the corporate governance field.
Bouchard served as Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery from 2014 to 2021. As the Court’s chief judge, Bouchard issued hundreds of opinions and rulings covering a wide range of corporate and commercial law issues, was responsible for the administrative functions of the Court, was a featured speaker on matters of corporate governance at venues across the country and served on the Delaware Board of Pardons. He has been a member of the Weinberg Center Advisory Board since 2014.
“The Weinberg Center has established itself as a preeminent forum for bringing together business leaders, professionals, jurists, academics and other constituencies to interact and collaborate on improving corporate governance,” Bouchard said. “I am honored to take on this role with the Advisory Board, particularly at a time when corporate governance has become more important than ever to society, and I look forward to working closely with the Center’s new director, Justin Klein, and the Center’s staff.”
Before his appointment to the Court of Chancery, Bouchard spent 28 years in private practice in Wilmington, Delaware, most recently as the managing partner of a corporate and commercial litigation boutique he founded in 1996. Bouchard previously served as a corporate litigator for an international law firm.
Bouchard currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Salesianum School, from which he graduated. He previously served as Chairman of the Delaware Judicial Nominating Commission, Chairman of the Delaware State Human Relations Commission, Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of St. Francis Hospital, Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Delaware Health Information Network, and as a member of numerous other boards and commissions, including the Criminal Justice Council, Sentencing Accountability Commission, and Delaware Board of Bar Examiners.
Bouchard is a member of the American Law Institute, a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, and a fellow of the American College of Governance Counsel. He received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Boston College, where he was the recipient of the Edward H. Finnegan Award, and his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. He was selected as a Harry S. Truman Scholar in 1981.
John L. Weinberg/IRRCi research paper winners have been announced.
The winning papers are:
“Does Revlon Matter? An Empirical and Theoretical Study,” by Matthew D. Cain, Berkeley Center for Law and Business; Sean J. Griffith, Fordham Law School (Presenter); Robert J. Jackson, Jr., New York University School of Law; Steven Davidoff Solomon, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
“Corporate Culture: Evidence from the Field,” by John R. Graham, Duke University & NBER; Jillian Grennan, Duke University (Presenter); Campbell R. Harvey, Duke University & NBER; Shivaram Rajgopal, Columbia University
On September 27, 2017, the Investor Stewardship Group (ISG), a collective of some of the largest U.S.-based institutional investors and global asset managers, along with several of their international counterparts, with combined assets of more than $22 trillion, today announced its partnership with the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, which will serve as the home of the ISG’s Investor Stewardship and Governance Principles.
The Center will be working with ISG on, among other things, its ongoing governance, creating a process for future revisions to the Framework, facilitating the communications strategy, and hosting its website.
