Conference on the future of the company a first for New Zealand

The Corporate Law Teachers Association, a group of mainly Australian corporate law academics, have met for an annual conference for almost 30 years. In 2019 for the first time, the conference was hosted outside Australia.

Over 70 delegates mainly from Australia but also from Asia, the UK and the US gathered at Auckland Law School earlier this month, for three days, to consider the theme of this year’s conference Possible Futures for the Company and for Corporate Law.

Professor Luca Enriques from Oxford University, the keynote speaker, reflected on the role that corporate, competition and tax law can play both to facilitate innovation and simultaneously assuage emergent societal risks arising from new technologies.

Justice Susan Glazebrook from the New Zealand Supreme Court, an Auckland alumnus, presented the second plenary session entitled Adapting to change: The Future of Corporate Governance. In a wide ranging and well received address Justice Glazebrook talked about a range of hot button issues in corporate governance including diversity on boards.

The third plenary session Te Pae Hihiri Māori Governance – Navigating the future, featured panellists Judge Layne Harvey, Mavis Mullins and Brian Tunui discussing the experiences and approaches to governance taken by Māori. The mainly overseas audience found much of interest in the Māori approach to governance as well as in the frank discussion about challenges faced.

As well as the plenary sessions, the conference also featured four tracks of parallel sessions over the three days, a cocktail function and dinner at the University’s Fale.

Another highlight was the launch by Justice Glazebrook, of a new book by Susan Watson and Lynne Taylor (eds) entitled Corporate Law in New Zealand (Thomson Reuters).
 

The book aims to be a modern, fresh analysis of corporate that places New Zealand corporations in their historical, current and international contexts.

Justice Helen Winkelmann in the foreword says: “… This text is a considerable accomplishment. It is thought provoking in the new perspectives it brings. The authors describe and explain the law in a way which makes sense of it, improving its accessibility for law students, academics, policy makers and judges. But I think that Corporate Law in New Zealand will also be of great assistance to the practising lawyer, and that is because of the clarity of explanation and analysis contained in it.

This text invites us all to broaden the knowledge we bring to bear when we come to apply or develop existing law. In that I think it is a harbinger of what will be required of lawyers, judges and policy makers working in this area in the future.”

To find out more visit https://www.thomsonreuters.co.nz/corporate-law-in-new-zealand-book/productdetail/126090