Participant Info
- First Name
- Joanne
- Last Name
- Sonin
- City
- London
- State
- UK
- Zip Code
- Research Interests
- corporate / company law, corporate governance, shareholders / stakeholders, regulation, legal history, law & economics, corporate finance
- Willing to be contacted by the media
- Yes
- On the academic market
- Yes
- University
- London School of Economics
- About Me
- I am currently pursuing a PhD in law at the LSE. My academic interests in company law, in general, and how shareholders interact with legal and regulatory frameworks, in particular, was piqued not in a classroom but in the meeting rooms of financial institutions and operating companies as a senior finance professional, acting both as a principal and as an advisor. It is in this capacity that the disconnect between the behaviour of financial actors, in this case shareholders, and the laws and regulations that are meant to protect and/or contain them, became clear. At the foundation of my research is a historical approach to the study of public-market equity investors, focusing on the evolving role and behaviour of U.K. shareholders in the context of changing legal, political, economic, and social conditions. My research investigates the misalignment of the financial markets with the law, considering the consequences of uneconomic and inefficient regulations and statutes. In examining the ways in which the shareholder body has changed, as well as the perceptions of those changes, I place particular emphasis on understanding the distinct types of shareholders and their evolution, including the variations of individual and institutional investors. My research also addresses the development and increasingly influential role of activist shareholders. A historical understanding of activism, and the legal framework within which it functions, sheds light on the divergent ways that investors exercise power. An examination of how the transformation of the shareholder body influences, and is influenced by, corporate behaviour raises increasingly pressing questions as to the optimality of legal and regulatory frameworks.
- Email
- jsonin@jfsonin.com
