Research activities

I am pleased to share my latest article, "Clash of Cultures: The EU Whistleblower Directive and National Company Law", published in the International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations (Vol. 41, Issue 1, 2025). The piece examines the tensions between the EU Whistleblower Directive and traditional company law principles, exploring how the new whistleblowing regime disrupts corporate compliance structures and suggesting ways to mitigate these frictions. You can find the full article here.

 

 

 

 

 

From October 31 to November 1, I had the pleasure to attend and participate in the 14th Nordic Company Law Conference at Aarhus University. There, I talked about "Whistleblowing arrangements as a tool for stakeholder involvement". My thoughts on the topic will contribute to the book project “Stakeholder Engagement in European Companies” launched by Hanne S. Birkmose and Karsten Engsig Sørensen. My special thanks go to Hanne and Karsten for their outstanding organization of the conference.

After my lecture for the students of NUCL on October 2nd I had the honor to talk to the faculty members of NUCL as well as affiliated lawyers and friends on EU whistleblowing regulation and its conflicts with traditional company law concepts. A lively discussion ensued which drew its appeal from the differences and commonalities of Japanese, EU and German law on the matter at hand. With this talk and the following traditional Japanese dinner my visit at Nihon University comes to an end. Once more I would like to express my gratitude to my hosts as well as my anticipation to meet them next year in Mainz.

Today, I had the pleasure to hold a lecture at Nihon University College of Law, Tokyo, on the new German partnership law having come into force at the beginning of this year. NUCL is a partner of the JGU faculty of law, management and economics. My gratitude for the opportunity to talk to the keen and ambitious Japanese law students of NUCL as well as to come to Tokyo to meet the esteemed members of NUCL faculty goes first and foremost to Dean Tsukasa Oda who is a special friend to our law faculty in Mainz. Furthermore, I would like to extend my thanks to Professor Rikiya Sakamoto who takes care of all the organizational matters that arise.

On June 13th and 14th 2024, the third German-Spanish-Austrian Symposium on Company and Capital Markets Law took place at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. It was a pleasure to participate and to contribute a presentation on “Dual-Class-Shares in Germany and Europe”. Many thanks to the host of this year’s meeting, Martin Winner.

On May 23 to 24 the third Italian-German Symposion on Company Law was hosted at the University of Padua by Marco Speranzin. This year's general topic was "Shareholders' Rights, Duties and Remedies". I contributed to the event by delivering a presentation on "Remedies in Corporate Law from a Law-and-Economics Perspective". For further information on that specific topic see link.

My article “Dual-class shares on the rise. Some remarks on the (re)introduction of multiple-voting rights in German stock corporation law” has now been published in the new issue of the journal European Company Case Law (ECCL). You will find a short feature of the article here .

A post featuring my paper “Dual-class on the rise - Some remarks on the (re)introduction of multiple-voting rights in German stock corporation law” (soon to be published in ECCL) has been published on the Oxford Business Law Blog. If the short text piques your interest you can find a full version of this paper on SSRN.

On February 07, 2024, I gave a lecture on "Whistleblowing: Incentives and Situational Determinants" at the Freie Universität Berlin. The event took place as part of the joint seminar with LSC-The Laws of Social Cohesion and is a part of the seminar series Preventing Corporate Misconduct of the Empirical Legal Studies Center (FUELS).

Issues of whistleblower protection are also relevant for corporate governance, particularly as a result of the German Whistleblower Protection Act (HinSchG) and the German Corporate Governance Code (DCGK). For this reason, the recently published handbook "Unternehmensführung durch Vorstand und Aufsichtsrat", edited by Peter Hommelhoff, Klaus Hopt and Patrick Leyens, includes my contribution on "Compliance and Whistleblowing in Stock Corporation, Antitrust and Capital Market Law" (in German). More information about the handbook can be found here.