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The joint seminar brought together professionals from some of the world's leading legal firms.
Exeter and Tsinghua Host Joint Seminar on Takeover Law
On Thursday 3rd May, academics from the University of Exeter and Tsinghua University hosted a joint seminar on the subject of takeover law. The seminar, entitled Takeover Law in the New Era of Globalisation: A UK and China Perspective, took place at Senate House in London. Alongside legal experts from Tsinghua and Exeter, the seminar brought together professionals from some of the world’s leading legal firms to address some of the challenges and opportunities related to takeover law in China.
Takeovers have been an efficient method for corporate competition, consolidation, and restructuring. China has come to embrace takeovers as a market practice and is seeking directions for further reforms of its law, regulatory model, and banking system. Researchers and policy-makers are currently developing options in response to these needs. Work in this area requires a fresh look at other related areas, such as the role of intermediaries, investment banks, funds, custodians, and stock exchanges. This seminar provided an opportunity to focus on the policy choices for China by looking, in particular, at the frameworks of the UK Takeover. Code and the EU Takeover Directive. The purpose of the seminar was to review the underlying policy for encouraging hostile takeovers in China and how it differs from the approaches of economies such as the UK and other EU countries, before exploring whether western models may provide a helpful example for China in developing its own policies.
In addition to participating in the takeover law seminar in London, a delegation of Tsinghua academics also visited the University of Exeter’s Streatham Campus to further develop links with the School of Law. On Wednesday, May 2nd, the delegation met with a number of delegates from Exeter’s Centre for Commercial and Corporate Law for a short networking discussion around common research interests. Given the complementary expertise of Tsinghua and Exeter academics in this area, there is ample opportunity for further impactful research collaborations to take place in the future.
Dr Joseph Lee said of the visit ‘Takeover Law is very much a hot topic in China now, so it has been very valuable to bring together some of the finest minds working in the field from both China and the UK for this seminar. Given the expertise that exists around this subject at both Tsinghua and Exeter, we feel we have an opportunity to generate some really impactful research that will inform policy making in China for years to come.’
Date: 8 May 2018