Professor Ventoruzzo to speak at decennial corporate law conference in Italy

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Penn State Law professor Marco Ventoruzzo will speak this week at the International Conference of the Rivista Delle Società, “Rules for the Market and Market for Rules: Corporate Law and the Role of the Legislature.”

The conference, held Nov. 13-14 in Venice, Italy, has been organized in recognition of the 60th anniversary of the Rivista, the leading peer-reviewed corporate law journal in Italy. The journal was founded by Tullio Ascarelli, an Italian scholar who escaped Nazi Europe in the 1930s and taught in Brazil, leaving a lasting influence on Brazilian law and scholarship before returning to Italy after WWII.

Ventoruzzo, who serves as an editor of Rivista, is scheduled to speak on “Regulatory Competition and Freedom of Contract in U.S. Corporate Law” at 4 p.m. on Nov. 13. Ventoruzzo will challenge the common wisdom that an active market for corporate charters exists in the U.S., and consider whether recent legislative reforms in Delaware, such as fee-shifting bylaws and forum selection clauses, fit the alternative theory he will discuss. The American experience can offer interesting insights for Europe, which in the last two decades has experienced a growing but different kind of regulatory competition in the area.

The conference will examine two distinct but related trends in corporate law and securities regulation taking place primarily in Europe and in the United States:  the growing scope of contractual freedom, private ordering, and regulatory competition versus the increasingly central role of administrative agencies in regulating corporations and financial markets and in enforcement. Speakers include leading academics and practitioners from Europe and the United States, such as professors Eilis Ferran from University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, David Skeel from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Klaus Hopt from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, Bruno Dondero from Sorbonne University, and Piergaetano Marchetti and Guido Rossi, editors-in-chief of the journal, both from Bocconi University In Italy. 

The conference is organized every 10 years on the San Giorgio Island in front of Saint Mark’s square in Venice, in a XVI century church designed by architect Palladio. Over 600 scholars, practitioners, judges, policymakers, and Ph.D. students from around the world will attend.

More information on the conference is available online in the conference program.