Corporate & Securities Law

What when where: active activist engagement

By Werner R. Kranenburg

There are three coming events, due to take place this week and in the coming months, that are interesting to note here.

The first is the third installment of Schiffrin Barroway Topaz & Kessler LLP’s annual Rights & Responsibilities of Institutional Investors conference on Thursday this week in Amsterdam. (This event is actually reportedly overbooked already.) This year’s keynote speaker is the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi A. Annan.

Among the other speakers are Elad Man of Man-Barak Advocates & Solicitors and Stefan Winheller of Winheller Rechtsanwälte, on the topic of international collective and class actions. (Both firms are in an alliance with Schiffrin Barroway.) Other topics of the day under the general theme of corporate governance will be the Vivendi Universal SA case and sovereign wealth funds. Interestingly, most speakers are corporate governance advisors or counsel with investment firms or are otherwise non-legal professionals on the ‘buy-side’ of legal services.

The second event of note is C5’s aptly-named Conference on Securities Litigation, taking place on Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 April (and a workshop Wednesday 30) at the Millennium Knightsbridge Hotel, London. Lots of friends of WV&Z and recognisable names appear on the speakers list. A selection, in no particular order:

• David Greene (Edwin Coe LLP)
• Patrick W. Daniels (Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP)
• Klaus Rotter (Rotter Rechtsanwälte)
• Ralph M. Stone (Shalov Stone Bonner & Rocco LLP)
• Kevin M. LaCroix (Oakbridge Insurance Services, D&O Diary)
• Anthony Maton (Cohen Milstein Hausfeld & Toll LLP) and
• Andrew L. Sandler (Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP)

Myths surrounding UK and European class actions, managing risk and D&O liability, KapMuG, the extra-territorial reach of the US and the subprime fallout are all on the menu. (programme)

And finally, a bit further away in May, is Grant & Eisenhofer PA’s Global Shareholder Activism Conference (May 15-16, Hotel Prince de Galles, Paris). Its three keynote speakers are former Senator Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD), Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Myron T. Steele and Jürgen Maruhn, Presiding Judge of the Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt am Main. Like the Schiffrin Barroway conference and unlike C5’s, the emphasis is on buy-side and even more so on academic speakers.

Werner says: after a three-month hiatus, it’s good to be back.

Full post as published by With Vigour and Zeal on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).