Christopher BRUNER
Visiting Scholar
Visiting Period : 1 February 2015 to 14 February 2015

Christopher Bruner is a Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University, where he also serves as Director of the Frances Lewis Law Center. His teaching and scholarship focus on corporate law and securities regulation, including international and comparative dimensions of these subjects. Professor Bruner's comparative study of U.S. and U.K. corporate governance, "Power and Purpose in the 'Anglo-American' Corporation," won the 2010 Association of American Law Schools Scholarly Papers competition. His book, Corporate Governance in the Common-Law World: The Political Foundations of Shareholder Power (Cambridge University Press, 2013), develops a new comparative theory of corporate governance in common-law countries. Professor Bruner has presented his scholarship in Australia, Denmark, Mexico, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and has conducted research as a visitor to the law faculties of the University of Cambridge, the University of Sydney, and the University of Toronto. He currently serves as a member of the Executive Committee for the Association of American Law Schools' Section on Business Associations, and a member of the Scholarship Advisory Group to the Younger Comparativists Committee of the American Society of Comparative Law. Professor Bruner received his A.B., M.Phil., and J.D. from Michigan, Oxford, and Harvard, respectively.

Research Areas

Market-Dominant Small Jurisdictions in a Globalizing Financial World

This book will examine the nature, legal status, and market roles of small jurisdictions active in cross-border corporate and financial services, developing a theory to explain the peculiar strengths of those small jurisdictions achieving substantial success in the global financial marketplace. These jurisdictions include Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory well-established among the world's preeminent insurance markets; Singapore, a city-state widely considered a rising power in wealth management; Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China serving as a critical gateway to and from the Mainland's enormous domestic market and production capabilities; Switzerland, the long-standing global leader in private banking; and the U.S. state of Delaware, the predominant jurisdiction of incorporation for U.S. public companies and a global competitor in the organization of various forms of business entities.

Market-Dominant Small Jurisdictions in a Globalizing Financial World will canvass extant conceptual frameworks and then develop a new paradigm better capturing their salient characteristics and competitive strategies - the "market-dominant small jurisdiction" (MDSJ). The book will also assess the future of MDSJs and territorial financial regulation in an age of accelerating cross-border financial activity.